BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) – With 100 days to go before the World Cup begins in Qatar, Human Rights Watch again urged FIFA and the host country to improve compensation for migrant workers and their families.
The human rights group called for “a program for compensation measures for workers seriously harmed, including death, injury and wage theft” while working on World Cup-related projects such as stadiums, transportation and hotels.
Qatar has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure since it was chosen to host it in 2010. It is also facing its own labor laws and the treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them from South Asia, who have migrated small. Emirates. to build projects.
Michael Page, Middle East deputy director of Human Rights Watch, said: “Qatar has compensated some migrant workers who suffered severe abuse in recent years, but for most these programs were built too late. And still working.”
Since 2010, the agency has stated that “the level of human rights abuses without compensation … is significant.”
In Qatar, the Workers Support Fund has paid out $164 million in compensation to 36,373 workers from 17 countries since 2020, HRW said, citing information from the Qatar Labor Ministry.
The organization did not give a figure for how much more compensation is needed, although Amnesty International has suggested that FIFA pay $440 million in workers’ compensation – to match the amount that the body would give to 32 federations of nations in prize money. Will pay that they play in Qatar.
FIFA and tournament organizers have cited the World Cup as a catalyst for the modernization of laws and society in Qatar.
In May, in response to Amnesty International, organizers in Qatar pointed to “significant improvements in housing standards, health and safety regulations, complaints mechanisms, health provisions and reimbursement of illegal recruitment fees to workers”.
