FIFA and the host country have long remained silent about the exact number of deaths on Qatar’s World Cup construction sites. Now the World Cup organizers are correcting the number from three to up to 500 for the first time. According to media reports, however, the number is significantly higher.
The secretary general of the organizing committee, Hassan al-Thawadi, spoke in an interview about several hundred guest workers who had died in connection with the World Cup in Qatar. “The estimate is around 400, between 400 and 500. I don’t have the exact number,” al-Thawadi said in an interview with Piers Morgan for the British TV channel “Talk TV”.
Morgan had asked: “Do you know how many people have died in construction work related to the World Cup in Qatar in the last 12 years since you were awarded the contract? In other words: new hotels, new bridges, what anyway. What is the realistic total number of migrant workers who have died as a result of work for the soccer World Cup?”
The organizing committee noted that al-Thawadi’s statement was based on national statistics for all work-related deaths nationwide in Qatar, for all sectors and nationalities, for the period 2014-2020. This number is 414. So far, Qatar has only mentioned three work-related and 37 non-work-related deaths in this context. According to media reports, however, several thousand workers died on World Cup construction sites.
A sensational report by the British “Guardian” from the beginning of 2021 spoke of more than 6,500 dead workers from five Asian countries on the emirate’s construction sites in the past ten years. Qatar had always rejected these figures.
In the conversation, Hassan al-Thawadi again referred to the reforms that have improved the conditions for workers on the World Cup construction sites in the emirate in recent years. The German Football Association and other European associations are campaigning for a compensation fund for guest workers in Qatar and for the establishment of a guest worker center in Doha.
