| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 02-10-2013 08:35 Post subject: It's only a game: Death, Slavery & 2022 World Cup |
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The Sovereign State of Qatar, is getting ready for the World Cup in 2022. The final death toll could be considerable.
| Quote: | http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/revealed-qatars-world-cup-slaves
Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'
Exclusive: Abuse and exploitation of migrant workers preparing emirate for 2022
World Cup construction 'will leave 4,000 migrant workers dead'
Analysis: Qatar 2022 puts Fifa's reputation on the line
The Guardian, Pete Pattisson in Kathmandu and Doha. 25 September 2013
Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar's preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.
This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022.
According to documents obtained from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August. More than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents.
The investigation also reveals:
• Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.
• Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.
• Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.
• Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.
• About 30 Nepalese sought refuge at their embassy in Doha to escape the brutal conditions of their employment.
The allegations suggest a chain of exploitation leading from poor Nepalese villages to Qatari leaders. The overall picture is of one of the richest nations exploiting one of the poorest to get ready for the world's most popular sporting tournament.
"We'd like to leave, but the company won't let us," said one Nepalese migrant employed at Lusail City development, a $45bn (£28bn) city being built from scratch which will include the 90,000-seater stadium that will host the World Cup final. "I'm angry about how this company is treating us, but we're helpless. I regret coming here, but what to do? We were compelled to come just to make a living, but we've had no luck."
The body tasked with organising the World Cup, the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, told the Guardian that work had yet to begin on projects directly related to the World Cup. However, it said it was "deeply concerned with the allegations that have been made against certain contractors/sub-contractors working on Lusail City's construction site and considers this issue to be of the utmost seriousness". It added: "We have been informed that the relevant government authorities are conducting an investigation into the allegations."
The Guardian's investigation also found men throughout the wider Qatari construction industry sleeping 12 to a room in places and getting sick through repulsive conditions in filthy hostels. Some say they have been forced to work without pay and left begging for food.
"We were working on an empty stomach for 24 hours; 12 hours' work and then no food all night," said Ram Kumar Mahara, 27. "When I complained, my manager assaulted me, kicked me out of the labour camp I lived in and refused to pay me anything. I had to beg for food from other workers."
Almost all migrant workers have huge debts from Nepal, accrued in order to pay recruitment agents for their jobs. The obligation to repay these debts, combined with the non-payment of wages, confiscation of documents and inability of workers to leave their place of work, constitute forced labour, a form of modern-day slavery estimated to affect up to 21 million people across the globe. So entrenched is this exploitation that the Nepalese ambassador to Qatar, Maya Kumari Sharma, recently described the emirate as an "open jail".
"The evidence uncovered by the Guardian is clear proof of the use of systematic forced labour in Qatar," said Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International, which was founded in 1839. "In fact, these working conditions and the astonishing number of deaths of vulnerable workers go beyond forced labour to the slavery of old where human beings were treated as objects. There is no longer a risk that the World Cup might be built on forced labour. It is already happening."
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Rest, links and video at link above
The Latest from, The Guardian:
| Quote: | http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/01/qatar-world-cup-2022-nepalese-die-building-sites
Qatar World Cup 2022: 70 Nepalese workers die on building sites
But Nepal and Qatar deny that migrants face slavery or forced labour as Fifa chiefs discuss safety on 2022 projects
The Guardian, Robert Booth. 1 October 2013
Seventy Nepalese builders working in Qatar in the runup to the 2022 football World Cup have died on construction sites since the start of 2012.
Fifteen have died this year, according to a death toll announced by Nepal government representatives in Doha. It is the clearest official data yet on the dangers facing 1.2 million migrant workers in the Gulf kingdom during the $100bn (£62bn)construction drive before the World Cup and came as David Cameron called on Qatar's leadership to take action. He said zero deaths on the London 2012 Olypmics project showed Doha "it can be done".
Nepalese trade unions said many of the fatalities were caused by workers without proper safety equipment toppling from the upper floors of buildings.
The death toll was released at a joint press conference held by the governments of Nepal and Qatar, at which they denied Guardian reports about brutal working conditions, long hours, lack of food and pay and squalid living quarters facing Nepalese workers.
Mohammad Ramadan, a legal adviser working for Nepali nationals in Qatar, claimed all Nepali workers were "safe and fully respected" but he cited data from the Nepal embassy, which revealed that 20% of the 276 Nepalis who died in Qatar last year were killed on building sites. The rest died of natural causes and in accidents not at the workplace. This year 151 Nepalis have died, one in 10 on building sites. Sources said workers had also been killed walking on Doha's congested roads and from heat exhaustion and dehydration.
There are 340,000 Nepali workers in Qatar and if the mortality rate was extrapolated across all migrant workers it would suggest that more than 200 foreign workers could have died on Qatari building sites since the start of 2012.
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Rest at link above
It's only a ba' game. |
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