Qatar World Cup
Qatar, the country that gave the world Al Jazeera, will be hosting the 2022 World Cup and is busy preparing for that event of huge global sport proportions. It is an enormous project requiring the building of impressive infrastructure to host the event. Eight to a dozen state-of-the-art stadiums are to be built in the process. Qatar is an immensely wealthy state, an oil Sheikdom (Monarchy) of only about 280,000 citizens. |
Doha Port Stadium in Doha. To be built. Expected capacity: 44,950
Photograph: Qatar 2022 Bid Committee
|
In such oil-rich Gulf States like Qatar which boasts the world's third largest oil reserves, it is not the scant citizenry of the country who do menial, physical work for cash compensation, but an imported work force from impoverished countries whose citizens travel to Qatar to earn whatever they can at low wages and no workplace safety or security guarantees, let alone human-rights expectations.
In a world top-heavy with oil-rich tyrannies the indigent poor of the world migrate for crumbs.
Qatar relies on its 2.4-million migrant workers to ensure that the infrastructure for the World Cup will be in place and on time. Workers come from countries like India, Pakistan, the Philippines and elsewhere in the east where jobs are scarce though impoverished, indigent families must somehow be fed. Labourers live in cramped, squalid conditions in Qatar. They earn a pittance and are at the mercy of those who employ them.
Qatar employs a system of employment whereby workers' passports are confiscated to be held by their employers, and at the same time exit visas are withheld. Workers are thus effectively held as prisoners to the labour system; unable to leave, unable to retake possession of their passports, unable to procure the documentation required to enable them to depart a country which feasts on their blood and sinew.
In the past year, no fewer than 194 Nepalese migrant workers have perished from the results of what has been termed "sudden cardiac death", caused by physical duress; overwork in dreadful working conditions and extreme heat. While the Nepalese embassy in Qatar says 400 workers have died since 2010 working on World Cup projects, India has reported that 500 of its own have died since 2012 in Qatar as well.
The general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation claims that at current rates, four thousand people will meet their deaths in producing the physical wherewithal of presenting the 2022 World Cup to the international community. According to a March ITUC report, 1,200 migrants have died in the four years since Qatar was awarded the World Cup -- or, conversely, bought the World Cup.
But FIFA president Sepp Blatter has no issues with stating "There is not one single doubt that the World Cup will be organized in Qatar". Yet both FIFA and Qatar are not entirely ignorant of what the world looking in from the outside is now realizing through investigative journalism revealing the crisis of humanity that is playing out in Qatar with the building of the World Cup features.
Britain's The Guardian had been investigating the crisis and reports that proposed alterations in working conditions for Qatar's virtual slave army should not be considered a reality until it is seen that changes actually are introduced and followed. Interesting that it is a British newspaper that follows the trajectory of Qatar's World Cup construction, and not Al Jazeera. But then, the first order of a hound is not to bite the hand that feeds it.
"Promises to fully review sponsorship and exit permits in the long term don't help workers on the ground. The government has been announcing a law on domestic workers' rights since 2008 but we still haven't seen it", said James Lynch of Amnesty International.
Labels: Middle East, Sports, World News
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 17, 2014
<< Home