Qatar 2022

[crazyfists]

Hi CrazyFists, always nice to hear your points of view on things.

Full disclosure: I'm based in Qatar now, and you can probably guess what attracted me here (hint - it wasn't the vibrant and liberal cultural life, even though things are better than I expected from that point of view) so to paraphrase Ian Paisley I'm 'drinking the devil's buttermilk' on this one.

One the one hand I completely acknowledge the issues around giving the World Cup to Qatar, both in the way it was awarded, and the decision itself. Being here I also see for myself and hear anecdotally about shocking instances of poor treatment of foreign workers.

At the same time, I do feel that the reporting around this is lacking balance. Regarding the deaths of workers building stadia, there is a problem. But there are usually problems for major sporting events - lots of workers died building the stadia for the Olympics in Greece. Lots of people died building the stadia for the World Cup in Brazil, plus paramilitary death squads were sent into the favelas to 'clean them up'.

There was an article in the Guardian a few months ago that quoted the total number of immigrant deaths from from all causes among the most represented immigrant populations (I think India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kenya, and if memory serves the total number was about 7000).

The article and especially the headline were craftily worded to make it sound like all of these had died building the stadia in the lead up to the tournament, when in fact it was all deaths of all causes recorded by the embassies of these countries in Doha, since 2010. If what they were implying were true it would make the construction sites akin to Auschwitz, which for all their faults, they are not.

The only link they provided to support this was an interview with an 'expert' who said that 'most' of these deaths were 'probably' related to the preparations for the World Cup - quite tenuous in my view.

It also didn't give any context about the fact that the population here is around 3 million, with just 300k being Qataris. The immigrant population is huge here, especially among the nationalities mentioned in the article. The International Labour Organisation representative working with the Qatari government on reforms actually criticised the article as misleading and counter productive, saying that the Qatari government has enacted a lot of legislation to protect workers, and these kind of gotcha articles just make his job harder.

The most significant change was the reform of the Kafala system, which was criticised (rightly in my view), but rarely explained. An immigrant worker here (me included) has to undergo blood tests, x rays, and quite a lot of other bureaucratic procedures before they can work. This all costs money. Some construction companies here used to let other firms do the hard part and recruit the workers, then poach the workers offering better wages once the workers had all their documentation. They could pay better salaries because they undercut their competitors on recruitment costs, hence a system was created to tie workers to their employers, and the employers permission was and in some cases still is needed to change employer / leave the country / open a bank account.

A highly problematic system, disgracefully abused by unscrupulous employers, but it existed for a reason - not just because Qataris are backward sadists, as was sometimes implied in various articles.

As far as I'm aware, an increasing amount of legislation is there to protect workers, and is enforced to a certain degree. Last month 200 companies were prosecuted in Doha for having workers work outside in the hottest part of the day. Some unscrupulous companies still break the rules, and through a mixture of lack of enforcement or sympathetic treatment from contacts in the government they get away with it.

I could go on, but suffice to say that Qatar has plenty of problems in terms of the way migrant workers are treated. At the same time, it is not alone in this, and is certainly above average and forward looking compared to many other Gulf countries. Again, I understand the concern about the award of the World Cup, but once that has happened, I don't understand why people expect a strictly tribal and religiously conservative society which was previously based around camel trading and pearl fishing, and which has already evolved tremendously in the last few decades, to become Sweden in the space of a few years. It just isn't going to happen.

If we leave aside the problematic instances in Qatar (not to minimise them, just to give context), it is a country where migrant workers from two of the poorest continents on earth can come and work for higher salaries than at home, receive free healthcare (which they almost certainly don't get at home), be somewhat protected by employment law, and receive an end of service gratuity when they leave. As long as this remains true, there will be no shortage of immigrant workers in Qatar, and unscrupulous companies will be able to exploit them, World Cup or no World Cup.

Great Post driller, enjoyed reading it.

[crazyfists]

Just a point of interest for you crazyfists. When I was out in Donetsk for Euro 2012 (great country by the way), I discovered that it is actually offensive to call it 'The Ukraine', because the use of 'the' dates back to the Soviet Union times and indicates that it is 'The Ukrainian part of Russia'. Which bristled them in 2012 and probably all the more so today!

Also a good post and will bear it in mind. I miss advice dog says........