In the brutal, unremitting heat of a Wednesday afternoon, a scene to make you flinch for those putting their backs into creating the glittering facade that Qatar will show off when its World Cup kicks off, one year on Sunday.
A half-dozen immigrant workers are on their knees under the sun, hammering away at the task of installing stone pavements around the Lusail Stadium, the as yet unfinished venue where the World Cup final will be held.
We discuss their pay — £12 a day — and their daily lives. Two hours from now, they will board one of the filthy Tata buses which are already chugging through this place, for a one-hour unpaid journey back north to their camp.
Migrant workers in Qatar are being paid £12 for 11-hour days with the World Cup next year
The Lusail Stadium, which will host the 2022 World Cup final, is currently as yet unfinished
They detail the race to get all this work done. ‘So many pavements!’ says one of the men, Shikhar, gesturing to the bags of Al Tameer Cement and stone stacked up all around this building site. Most of Doha is currently dug up.
There is one universal anxiety — their enforced leave from this place for five months, from next August, as the Gulf state presents its best face to the world. ‘The lieu,’ as these men all call it. They have been led to believe it will be unpaid. But they are generally philosophical and uncomplaining.
The fact they are exposed to the burning heat — scarves and rags wrapped around their faces and just one ‘rest area’ the size of a small bus stop — does not even enter the conversation.
It is a scene which speaks to the most inexplicable part of Qatar’s controversial World Cup: how a supposedly modern Gulf state which has spent billions on a 28-day competition intended to burnish its global reputation does not appreciate how terrible the treatment of these workers makes it look.
The workers’ exposure to the sun very much does matter. Amnesty International’s damning Reality Check report published today on the state of migrant workers finds that ‘heat stress’ has posed ‘a huge risk to workers’ and caused an unquantifiable number of deaths.
It details the cases of six relatively young migrants whose deaths here remain unexplained. Suman Miah was a 34-year-old construction worker who collapsed and died last year after a long shift in temperatures that reached 100°F (38°C). Tul Bahadur Gharti, also 34, died in his sleep around the same time, after working outdoors for about 10 hours in heat of up to 102°F (39°C).
One worker remarked upon how many pavements needed to be taken care of with preparation for the 2022 competition now ramping up
Workers have a designated 'rest area' the size of a bus stop during their long day of work
Sujan Miah, a 32-year-old found dead in bed by workmates, was a pipe fitter on a project in the desert working in temperatures exceeding 104°F (40°C).
Amnesty’s report describes how it is extremely difficult to get to the bottom of these cases, or to understand the contribution of heat, because vague death certificates explain them as ‘natural causes’ or ‘cardiac arrest’.
These descriptions are ‘almost meaningless in certifying deaths — and thus no connection to their working conditions is made’, the Amnesty report states. ‘As a result, bereaved families are denied the opportunity to know what happened to their loved ones. It also prevents
