Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup football announces nine worker deaths
The Qatar World Cup 2022 Supreme Committee announced
that nine workers had died between February 2019 to December 2019 in its
Workers’ Welfare Progress Report.
One worker reportedly collapsed during a shift and
was later transported to a medical clinic where his death was recorded as
“acute heart failure/natural death.” The committee ruled in an investigation
that the contractor who the worker was with had not made proper medical care
plans available, the report said.
Two of the nine workers were found by colleagues in
an unresponsive state. One has been ruled as death by “acute heart failure due
to natural causes,” while the other is unresolved, according to the report.
Another worker, a 20-year-old Nepali national,
committed suicide.
The report noted that the deaths were
“non-work-related.”
Previous reports from human rights group Amnesty
International suggested that many workers building the stadiums for the Qatar
World Cup have been “unpaid for months” and exploited.
In November 2018, human rights group Sherpa said
that a construction firm in Qatar was forcing employees to work between 66 and
77 hours a week on salaries that were a fraction of the country’s average. The
group said that witnesses had seen workers vomiting and suffering from weakness
due to the high temperature conditions.
The World Cup host has been under intense scrutiny
over labor rights since construction began.
