Dressing up Qatar
"We are modest. We want people to come and see [Qatar, hosting 2022 World Cup soccer event]."
"Yes, you could be a modest person, you could be a conservative country and still be a fun-loving country, and you could still play football and you could still host a World Cup."
Nasser al-Khater, assistant secretary general, Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy Tree Nursery
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| The artists' impressions of Qatar stadia are sexy, but the issues seem to no longer be |
Israel pioneered the advent of making the desert bloom, and it did so for agricultural purposes, to make itself self-sufficient in the basics of whole food availability in fruits and vegetables grown on Kibbutzim, collective agricultural farms. This was a country that started with hard labour -- hard labour of its own, with its young men and women committing themselves to becoming farmers, agricultural workers, ensuring that the new nation was capable of feeding itself.
Qatar is a country whose discovery of natural gas resources made it enormously wealthy. It too is engaged in transforming the desert from grey to green, a verdant Paradise where this nation of two-point-six million people can anticipate rainfall of five centimeters annually. And where temperatures in its capital Doha are in the mid-30s Celsius summer-long, with an oppressively hot desert sun baking the atmosphere.
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Qatar’s population is 2.6 million, of whom nearly 90 per cent are migrant workers
Getty
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Qatar is confident that it will give the visiting world a first-class show in November of 2022, and preparations are apace to ensure this can be accomplished. The desert on which it sits will by then host eight stadiums where competition at the elite level will take place of the most popular sport in the world. Qatar will manage to 'air condition' those stadiums through clever, expensive engineering. But in Qatar money is no object for it is plentiful.
Vast tents have been erected as plant nurseries with ten thousand trees being nurtured to semi-maturity before being planted eventually. Those tender saplings require the tented shade and when they eventually are planted they will be an anomaly in a region with sparse-to-nil rainfall and vegetation-broiling heat. And nor will there be a shortage of green, green grass, now being cultivated in huge rolled sheets to ensure the desert will not appear barren.
After all, an anticipated million-and-a-half visitors are expected to travel to Qatar for this world event to help Qatar celebrate its uniqueness. Of course there is already millions of foreigners present there. They represent the labour that will build the infrastructure, roll out the carpets of grass, plant the trees and any other hard work that must be done for this splendid occasion. The International Labour Organization, a UN agency, is satisfied Qatar is cooperating in recognition of workers' rights.
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Calton (right) left his native Kenya to work in building structures for the World Cup in Qatar.
Credit:Image courtesy of “The Workers Cup LLC”
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"Amongst the most frequently reported problems facing migrant workers are: deceptive recruitment practices which see migrant workers promised more favourable conditions of work by recruiters in their home country than they are given on arrival in Qatar; employers compelling workers to live in squalid conditions; employers confiscating workers’ passports and denying them the exit visa they need to leave Qatar; late or non-payment of wages; and employers not giving workers proper identity documents, which leaves them exposed to arrest. In extreme, but not exceptional, cases migrants are subjected to forced labour."Close to two million foreign workers from what was once called 'third-world countries' and are now euphemistically referred to as 'developing countries', are working in Qatar to prepare the sites for a world celebration of the beautiful game. They are very busy, making Doha beautiful. Al Jazeera will have much to crow about on behalf of its paymaster. It certainly will not point out that some of the workers slave away for over 72 hours weekly, nor that one contractor worked for over 124 consecutive days.
Amnesty International
Qatar is looking for greater name recognition, to be more celebrated for its place in the world. The World Cup is a splendid opportunity, and its own news organ with tentacles world-wide represents a great asset to ensure it crows long and hard.
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Al Bawaba
Khalifa International Stadium
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Labels: Al Jazeera, Qatar, Soccer, Sport, World Cup
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, July 24, 2018
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