Thursday, 31 March 2016

Qatar World Cup 2022: FIFA ignoring migrant workers abuses, says Amnesty

The Khalifa International Stadium "will fit 40,000 spectators and be completely cooled, including the field of play, all seats and concourses," soccer's world governing body FIFA said in September 2015. But what's the human cost of this World Cup venue's construction?

  • He's the migrant worker busting a gut to build Qatar's shiny soccer stadiums that will host FIFA's World Cup in 2022 -- at a price.

A metal worker and father of three from Nepal who carried out work on the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha between February and May 2015 -- that price was the loss of his family's home after he experienced a three-month delay in being paid, according to Amnesty international.
Prem is just one example of ongoing exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar at a venue for the 2022 World Cup that soccer's world governing body FIFA can no longer turn "a blind eye" to, says the human rights organization's new report published Thursday.
Amnesty said it has found evidence of "systematic abuses," including forced labor of migrant workers at the Khalifa Stadium.
"If the system in Qatar doesn't change, then every man, woman and child who goes to the World Cup is likely to meet a migrant worker who is exploited," Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty's director of global issues and research, told CNN in a phone interview.
FIFA and its sponsors should push for change, or risk being "tainted by association," Amnesty warned. But in a statement, Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy said it was "committed to ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of every worker on World Cup projects."
Amnesty's 80-page report, titled "The ugly side of the beautiful game: Labor exploitation on a Qatar World Cup venue," is based on interviews in the year to February 2016 with 234 male migrants working either in construction at the Khalifa Stadium or in landscaping at the Aspire Zone Complex, where top European soccer clubs such as Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Paris Saint-Germain have trained.
The abuses found include: workers living in "squalid and cramped accommodation"; employers confiscating workers passports; workers being threatened for complaining about working conditions; workers having to pay as much as $4,300 to recruiters in their home country to get a job in Qatar, along with some not being paid for months.
However Qatar said the "tone of Amnesty International's latest assertions paint a misleading picture."
"We have always maintained this World Cup will act as a catalyst for change -- it will not be built on the back of exploited workers," said the gulf kingdom's Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy in a statement sent to CNN. "We wholly reject any notion that Qatar is unfit to host the World Cup.
"Amnesty International's investigation was limited to just four companies out of more than 40 currently engaged on Khalifa International Stadium. The conditions reported were not representative of the entire work force on Khalifa.
"Many of the issues raised had been addressed by June of 2015, months before the publication of Amnesty's report."

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