A top Qatari official involved in the country's World Cup organization has put the number of worker deaths for the tournament “between 400 and 500” for the first time, a drastically higher number than any other previously offered by Doha.
FILE - Workers walk to the Lusail Stadium, one of the 2022 World Cup stadiums, in Lusail, Qatar, Friday, Dec. 20, 2019. The eight stadiums for the World Cup, all within a 30-mile radius of Doha, are now largely complete. Migrant laborers who built Qatar's World Cup stadiums often worked long hours under harsh conditions and were subjected to discrimination, wage theft and other abuses as their employers evaded accountability, a rights group said in a report released Thursday.
In the interview, portions of which Morgan posted online, the British journalist asks al-Thawadi: "What is the honest, realistic total do you think of migrant workers who died from – as a result of work they’re doing for the World Cup in totality?” Those released figures put the total number of deaths at 40. They include 37 from what the Qataris describe as nonwork incidents such as heart attacks and three from workplace incidents. One report also separately lists a worker death from the coronavirus amid the pandemic.
Since FIFA awarded the tournament to Qatar in 2010, the country has taken some steps to overhaul the country’s employment practices. That includes eliminating its so-called kafala employment system, which tied workers to their employers, who had say over whether they could leave their jobs or even the country.
“This is just the latest example of Qatar’s inexcusable lack of transparency on the issues of workers’ deaths," said Nicholas McGeehan of Fairsquare, a London-based group which advocates for migrant workers in the Middle East. “We need proper data and thorough investigations, not vague figures announced through media interviews.
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