Hundreds of labourers in the World Cup host nation die each year. In majority of cases, authorities do not perform postmortems. Majority of the fatalities attributed to heart attacks or “natural causes” by the Qatari authorities. Last week, news reported that hundreds of thousands of workers were being exposed to potentially fatal levels of heat stress, toiling in temperatures of up to 45C for up to 10 hours a day.
At least 1,025 Nepalis died in Qatar between 2012 and 2017, 676 of them from causes deemed to be natural. Data from the Indian government reveals that 1,678 Indians died in Qatar between 2012 and August 2018.
The causes included cardiac arrest, heart attack, respiratory failure and “sickness”, according to a number of official sources, including the Foreign Employment Board, a government agency in Nepal responsible for the welfare of migrant workers. The FEB’s data is largely derived from death certificates issued in Qatar.
Added to thousands of deaths, new research by Amnesty International has revealed the plight of hundreds of migrant workers who are still waiting in vain for unpaid wages and compensation, despite Qatar’s promises to improve workers’ rights.
hundreds of migrant workers employed by three construction and cleaning companies have given up on justice and returned home penniless since March 2018. This is despite the Qatari authorities having established new committees intended to rapidly resolve labour disputes, as part of reforms agreed ahead of the 2022 World Cup.
Last year the committees received more than 6,000 complaints, most of which had not been resolved at the end of the year.
The committees have been so inundated with complaints, and have so few judges, that workers are forced to wait months for their cases to be processed. Even when compensation is awarded it is often not paid, and Qatar has so far failed to launch the support fund it promised in October 2018.
Since March 2018, Amnesty International has followed the search for justice of more than 2,000 people working for Hamton International, which is related to Sheikh Hamad bin Khaled bin Hamad and United Cleaning, after the companies stopped paying their wages for several months, citing financial difficulties, before ceasing operations and ending their contracts.
Hundreds of migrant workers in Qatar went on strike to protest what they say are poor working conditions, unpaid and delayed wages, and threats of reduced wages, Human Rights Watch said.
Migrant workers in Qatar are governed by an exploitative labor system that can leave them vulnerable to forced labor by trapping them in employment situations in which their rights to fair wages, overtime pay, adequate housing, freedom of movement, and access to justice are at risk.
Between 800 and 1,000 other employees refused to report to work on August 5, 2019. They faced repeated threats from their management to deport them if they refused to sign new contracts substantially reducing their wages.
At least 1,620 of these workers submitted complaints to the new Committees for the Settlement of Labour Disputes, which were introduced in March 2018. According to a US State Department report, the committees received more than 6,000 complaints in 2018.
While some of them were eventually given part of what they were owed by their employers in exchange for dropping their cases, most went home with nothing. None of the workers received compensation through the committee system.
While Qatari law states that the committees are supposed to issue judgements on cases within six weeks of a complaint being made, Amnesty found that workers had to wait between three and eight months.
In the meantime, they lived without income in labour camps lacking sufficient food and running water, facing impossible choices about whether to go home or fight on, or die.
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