KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 15

Over three dozen Nepali civil society organisations today published an open letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, urging him to "stop looking the other way" while migrant workers are being denied compensation after having suffered abuses in Qatar.

The organisations have displayed their message on billboards across Kathmandu, including at Tribhuvan International Airport, where workers from Qatar often return without wages and at times coffins arrive with bodies of deceased migrant workers.

The letter highlights how migrant workers, who have returned to Nepal, are unable to access a compensation fund set up by Qatar in 2018 to reimburse stolen wages, and how bereaved families are unable to receive compensation if cause of their loved one's death is not investigated.

"We have come together to urge Gianni Infantino to make good on FIFA's promise to respect workers' rights and compensate workers who have suffered abuses and families who have lost loved ones," said Som Prasad Lamichhane, executive director of Pravasi Nepali Coordination Committee.

"We know the real human cost of abuses faced by so many workers in Qatar. Families have plunged into poverty, children have been taken out of school, and workers forced to migrate again to pay off debts. FIFA cannot be blind tothis reality and must act to make things right."

In a press release today, Amnesty International Nepal said that around 400,000 workers from Nepal were employed across a range of sectors in Qatar and even played a huge role in building vast infrastructure projects required to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

While remittances from workers abroad play a major part in Nepal's economy, those who have travelled to work in the Gulf and elsewhere have regularly suffered a range of labour abuses.

Nepali workers typically pay illegal recruitment fees of over $1,000 to secure jobs and human rights organisations regularly document cases of forced labour and unpaid wages, including at sites linked to the World Cup.

"Workers have also lost lives due to dangerous working conditions and their deaths have rarely been investigated.

A peer-reviewed study found that deaths of at least 200 Nepali construction workers could have been prevented between 2009 and 2017 with adequate protection from extreme heat," the AI said.

In recent years, Qatar has introduced a number of reforms to strengthen labour laws and opened a new visa centre in Nepal aiming to reduce abuses.

Despite some progress, abuses persist on a significant scale. "There is a huge danger that when the final whistle is blown on the World Cup, the contribution and sacrifice of so many migrant workers will be forgotten and their claims to justice and compensation ignored," said Nirajan Thapaliya, director of AI Nepal.

"If FIFA wants to show respect towards the people who made this tournament possible, Gianni Infantino shouldensure that workers and their families are compensated.

Their claims must not be dismissed any longer."

Since May, a global coalition of human rights organisations, trade unions, and fans' groups have called on FIFA and Qatar to set up a remediation programme that would compensate workers and invest in programmes to prevent future abuses.

The call has been supported by 12 football associations and four FIFA sponsors. Opinion polls also show that it is supported by a large majority of the public in 15 countries.

However, FIFA has continued to refuse to compensate workers. On Monday, a coalition of international human rights organisations criticised FIFA for 'misleading the world' on workers' compensation.

Though FIFA officials have said that they were working on a plan to ensure workers were compensated, Gianni Infantino passed the buck on the eve of the tournament and said that anyone who had suffered abuses should simply "contact the relevant authorities to seek due recompense" from Qatar's existing compensation fund.

However, this mechanism remains inaccessible to those who have already left the country, caps the amount that can be paid to each worker, and will not support families of workers whose deaths may have been wrongly attributed to 'natural causes' because investigations were not carried out.

The coalition called on Gianni Infantino to use a newly-announced Legacy Fund to compensate workers and establish an independent migrant workers' centre as requested by trade unions, such as Building and Wood Workers' International. Though the size of the proposed fund is not yet known, it is intended to support educational projects and a planned 'labour excellence hub'.

A version of this article appears in the print on December 16, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.