More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since winning the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, according to The Guardian.
The findings, compiled from government sources, mean that an average of 12 migrant workers from these five South Asian nations have died every week since the night of December 2010, when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.
Data from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka revealed that there were 5,927 deaths of migrant workers during the period 2011-2020. Separately, data from the Pakistani embassy in Qatar reported 824 more deaths of Pakistani workers, between 2010 and 2020.
The total number of deaths is significantly higher, as these figures do not include the deaths of several countries that send large numbers of workers to Qatar, including the Philippines and Kenya. Deaths in the last months of 2020 are also not included.
In the last ten years, Qatar has embarked on an unprecedented construction program, mainly in preparation for the 2022 football tournament. In addition to seven new stadiums, dozens of major projects have been completed or are underway, including a new one. airport, roads, public transport systems, hotels and a new city, which will host the World Cup final.
While death records are not classified by occupation or job, it is likely that many workers who have died have been hired on these World Cup infrastructure projects, according to Nick McGeehan, director of FairSquare Projects, a defense group specializing in labor rights in the Gulf. “A very significant proportion of migrant workers who have died since 2011 were only in the country because Qatar won the right to host the World Cup,” he said.
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There have been 37 deaths among workers directly related to the construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “unrelated to work” by the event’s organizing committee. Experts have questioned the use of the term because in some cases it has been used to describe deaths in the workplace, including several workers who have collapsed and died at stadium construction sites.
The findings reveal Qatar’s failure to protect its migrant workforce of two million people, or even to investigate the causes of the apparent mortality rate among largely young workers.
World Cup workers: death toll – revised
Behind the statistics are countless stories of devastated families who have been left without their main breadwinner, struggling to get compensation and confused about the circumstances of their loved one’s death.
Nepal’s Ghal Singh Rai paid nearly £ 1,000 in recruitment costs for his job as a cleaner at a camp for workers building the Education World Cup stadium. A week after arriving, he committed suicide.
Another worker, Mohammad Shahid Miah, of Bangladesh, was electrocuted in his worker’s accommodation after the water came in contact with exposed electricity cables.
In India, Madhu Bollapally’s family has never understood how the 43-year-old died of “natural causes” while working in Qatar. His body was found lying on the bedroom floor.
Madhu Bollapally
Qatar’s heavy death toll is revealed in long official data spreadsheets listing the causes of death: multiple blunt wounds due to a fall from a height; suffocation to hang; indeterminate cause of death by decomposition.
But, among the causes, the most common is by far the so-called “natural deaths,” often attributed to acute heart or respiratory failure.
According to data obtained by The Guardian, 69% of deaths among Indian, Nepalese and Bangladeshi workers are classified as natural. Only among Indians, the figure is 80%.
The Guardian has previously reported that these classifications, which are usually done without an autopsy, often do not provide a legitimate medical explanation for the underlying cause of these deaths.
In 2019 it was found that Qatar’s intense summer heat is likely to be a significant factor in many worker deaths. The Guardian’s findings were backed by research commissioned by the UN International Labor Organization, which revealed that for at least four months a year workers faced significant heat stress when working outside.
A report by the Qatari government’s own lawyers in 2014 recommended that it commission a study on the death of migrant workers from cardiac arrest and amend the law to “allow autopsies … in all cases of unexpected or sudden death.” The government has done neither.
Qatar continues to “drag this critical and urgent issue into apparent disregard for workers’ lives, ”said Hiba Zayadin, a Gulf rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “We have called on Qatar to amend its autopsy law to require forensic investigations into all sudden or unexplained deaths and to pass legislation to require that all death certificates include reference to a cause of death that has medical significance,” he said. .
Mohammad Shahid Miah |
The Qatari government says the number of deaths (which it does not argue) is proportional to the size of the migrant workforce and the figures include white-collar workers who have died naturally after living in Qatar for many years.
“The mortality rate among these communities is within the expected range for the size and demographics of the population. However, every life lost is a tragedy and no effort is spared in trying to prevent every death in our country.” , the Qatari government said in a statement from a spokesman.
The official added that all foreign nationals have access to free first-class health care and that there has been a steady decline in the mortality rate among “guest workers” over the past decade due to reforms in safety and health in the labor system.
World Cup workers: causes of death: latest data
Other significant causes of death among Indians, Nepalese and Bangladeshis are traffic accidents (12%), work accidents (7%) and suicide (7%).
Covid-related deaths, which have remained extremely low in Qatar, have not significantly affected the figures, with just over 250 fatalities among all nationalities.
For Singh Rai
The Guardian’s investigation has also revealed a lack of transparency, rigor and detail in the registration of deaths in Qatar. The embassies of Doha and the governments of the countries that send labor are reluctant to share the data, possibly for political reasons. When statistics have been provided, there are inconsistencies between the figures of different government agencies and there is no standard format for recording the causes of death. A South Asian embassy said they could not share data on the causes of death because they were only recorded by hand in a notebook.
“There is a real lack of clarity and transparency surrounding these deaths,” said May Romanos, an Amnesty International Gulf researcher. “Qatar needs to strengthen its occupational safety and health standards.”
The World Cup organizing committee in Qatar, when asked about the deaths in stadium projects, said: “We deeply regret all these tragedies and investigated every incident to make sure lessons were learned. Always we have maintained transparency on this issue and we are discussing inaccurate claims about the number of workers who have died in our projects ”.
In a statement, a spokesman for FIFA, the governing body of world football, said it was fully committed to protecting workers’ rights from FIFA projects. “With very strict safety and health measures in place … the frequency of accidents at the FIFA World Cup works has been low compared to other major construction projects around the world,” they said. , without providing evidence.