World

6,500 migrant worker deaths while Qatar rejoices in WC 2022 preparations saddens South Asian nations

By THT ONLINE

Photo courtesy: The New York Times

KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 23

According to a report published in The Guardian, migrant workers in excess of 6,500 from five South Asian nations -- Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka -- have lost their lives since the Gulf nation Qatar was granted the right to host the 2022 football World Cup.

The British portal claimed to have assembled the aforementioned figures from government sources, which when viewed numerically can be interpreted to mean an average death of 12 migrant workers each week since December 2010 from the five countries.

The already flabbergasting numbers could yet be an underestimate as figures from other major labour exporters including Kenya and Philippines have been excluded in addition to exclusion of deaths in the final months of 2020 in the presented figures.

Qatar, in the last ten years, has taken up an extensive building programme in preparation for the football tournament in 2022. Seven new stadiums, building projects including a new airport, roads, public transport systems, hotels and a new city, which will host the final, have either been completed or are fast progressing.

Nick McGeehan, a director at FairSquare Projects which is an advocacy group specialising in labor rights in the Gulf was quoted as saying that although records on segregation of the deceased workers by occupation or place of work is not available it is very much a possibility that the now-deceased workers were deployed on these World Cup Infrastructure projects.