A Qatari leader admits “the death of between 400 and 500 workers” in the last decade in his country

The Doha government only acknowledges the death of 37 workers due to accidents related to the World Cup or due to working conditions. The pressure exerted on the authorities in Doha in recent years had managed to get this state to agree to change its Constitution to introduce improvements in working conditions, such as a minimum wage, the limitation of hours working abroad above of 50 degrees and the fact that the worker is allowed to terminate the contract if he wants to, but many NGOs have reported that the conditions suffered by the workers are still very harsh.

A few months ago an information from the British newspaper The Guardian estimated at 6,500 the workers who have died in Qatar because of the working conditions, “totally inhumane”, as defined by the leaders of organizations such as Human Rights Watch. The workers who died were mostly from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Pakistan. Most of the dead are men between 30 and 40 years old. According to Qatar, they would have died of heart problems while working, in exchange for monthly wages ranging from 200 to 700 euros, depending on the tasks. NGOs question that such a high number of deaths due to heart problems is possible, as they are almost always young people with no known history of this type.

Qatar only compensates the family of the deceased if it can be proven that the death was a direct result of an error or accident at work, which has resulted in few families receiving compensation. According to official sources, 30,000 foreign workers were hired to build the stadiums alone, a figure that would be higher if you consider that 100 hotels and a new airport were also built. Qatar only officially recognizes the death of 37 workers and only in three cases admits that they were due to causes directly related to the work done.