Football Hell

Qatar's disastrous approach to the football world cup

Football Hell In Qatar, allegedly 4000 workers will die to put on the 2022 Football World Cup. This staggering figure indicates the slave-like conditions the builders of football's most expensive construction project are enduring. Qatar's capital Doha is a beautiful desert oasis of incredible wealth, built by migrant workers who are almost slaves. Bullied, abused, yet somehow still grateful - their choice is between dehumanising conditions or a return to poverty in their home countries.

Workers won't speak out for fear of being fired, but for some, hopelessness outweighs the fear. Migrant labourers building for the 2022 World Cup are forced into long hours on the side of roads or inside factories in the sweltering heat. Their living situations are just as trying: poor sanitation, no running water, and cramped, extremely hot quarters. "We have been here for 2 months. And for 2 months we haven't been given beds"," says one worker. Some work seven days a week, fifteen hours a day, returning home to overcrowded slums where even stray animals struggle to survive. If they're sick "the company cuts their salary for going to the hospital", and hospital staff admitted that many workers die from heart attacks as they are literally worked to death.

These migrant workers are now trapped in slave-like contracts as they can't repay the loans that they took out to travel, as the salary they receive is almost half what they were originally promised. The companies have also failed to deliver on everything else they promised: good accommodation, decent food, and tickets for return trips home. Some workers are also victims of exploitative middlemen, who arrange their jobs and then take two thirds of their salary and confiscate their passports so that they cannot return home.

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar will cost the country $200 billion, and for the contractors charged with making it happen - finance is all that matters. "They don't care how many die, only how much they get" claims one insider. The Labour Ministry says that they are taking these allegations of human rights abuses seriously, but film maker Johnny Miller claims: "the extreme level of exploitation is clearly not matched by their will".

Yet despite the appalling conditions, some are better off in Qatar than back home. "This is our life. In my country there is no work. Too much corruption. No money, no work."

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