AMN /
The Indian embassy in Doha has informed that a total of 279 Indians, including migrant workers had died in 2015 in Qatar. However it has not divulged the cause of deaths.
Amnesty International which released the report, ““The ugly side of the beautiful game: Labour exploitation on a Qatar 2022 World Cup venue” today said in a statement that, Amnesty India had filed an RTI seeking information from the MEA about the deaths of Indian workers in Qatar and of the working conditions.
“The Indian embassy in Doha replied that 279 Indians, including migrant workers had died in 2015. They refused to divulge the cause of deaths”, the statement said.
The Amnesty International report said that migrant workers building Khalifa International Stadium in Doha for the 2022 World Cup have suffered systematic abuses, in some cases forced labour.
The report, “The ugly side of the beautiful game: Labour exploitation on a Qatar 2022 World Cup venue”, blasts FIFA’s shocking indifference to appalling treatment of migrant workers. The number of people working on World Cup sites is set to surge almost ten-fold to around 36,000 in the next two years.
“Despite five years of promises, FIFA has failed almost completely to stop the World Cup being built on human rights abuses,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty
The workers, mostly from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, spoke to Amnesty International in Qatar between February and May 2015. When Amnesty International researchers returned to Qatar in February 2016, some of the workers had been moved to better accommodation and their passports returned by companies responding to Amnesty International findings, but other abuses had not been addressed.