Doha: Amnesty
International has accused Qatar of using ‘forced labor’ for renovating a
stadium for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
According to a report
released by Amnesty on Thursday, dozens of construction workers from Nepal and
India were housed in squalid accommodation and barred from leaving the country
by employers in Qatar who confiscated their passports.
Amnesty compiled the
52-page report based on interviews from February to May 2015 with 132
construction workers at the Khalifa International Stadium, one of the several
arenas that will host World Cup matches. The London-based group also
interviewed 99 migrants doing landscaping work in a surrounding sports complex
that is not directly related to the games, and three other gardeners working
elsewhere.
The report also said that staff from
one labor-supply firm threatened to withhold pay and report workers to police
to exact labor from migrants, which the group called “forced labor”. When
Amnesty 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 the findings.
The Supreme Committee
for Delivery & Legacy, the organizers for the 2022 World Cup, said: “The
conditions reported were not representative of the entire work force on Khalifa
(the stadium where the workers were interviewed).”
Amnesty
said every migrant it had interviewed had reported abuses of one kind or another,
including being threatened for complaining about their conditions
The
Qatari government said its Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and
Social Affairs would investigate the contractors named in the report.
Foreigners account for roughly 90 per cent
of the 2.5 million people living in Qatar. Most of them are low-paid migrant
workers from South Asia. Most of the workers interviewed in the Amnesty report
were from Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
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