The situation for migrant workers and the deaths in connection with the construction work before the Football World Cup in Qatar received worldwide attention. Now tell new reports about terrible working conditions and illegal practices in the WC country. – Nothing has changed. Even during the world championship, there were people who were not paid their salaries and who lived in terrible conditions, says Malcolm Bidali to news. Bidali, who is from Kenya, worked as a security guard in Qatar before the World Cup in football. But on 4 May 2021 he was arrested after blogging about life in the Oil State. Malcolm Bidali believes the situation is the same as before for the migrant workers in Qatar. Here during the Oslo Freedom Forum this week. After a month in prison, he was released. He was then deported to his native Kenya. This week he told his story at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Bidali says that for security reasons he no longer has any contact with his former colleagues in Qatar. But based on his network of contacts, he gets information about how the situation is in the country. – I don’t want to say it has gotten worse. I would rather say that it is “business as usual”, says Bidali. He believes the problem is that the rules look good on paper, but that they are not put into practice. He believes that living conditions, unpaid wages, long working days and heatstroke still characterize working life in the country where he himself worked before. Bidali was himself a security guard before he was imprisoned and then deported from the country. Photo: Oslo Freedom Forum – Skuffa This week Amnesty International came out with a new report. There they stated that hundreds of migrant workers, who were employed as security guards during the World Cup, were still suffering in Qatar. The organization has spoken to 22 security guards, who worked during the championship on short-term contracts in the Qatar-owned company Teyseer Security Services. The report states that the migrant workers must have paid for illegal recruitment fees out of their own pockets. They must also have been promised conditions around the appointments, which are not true, Amnesty concludes. The deaths among workers in Qatar received critical attention from the western press before the Football World Cup last year. Photo: AP Photo/Hassan Ammar – We are very disappointed with Fifa, because we submitted a report to FIFA in April last year. There we considered the situation of the security guards in Qatar. This is what project manager Frank Conde Tangberg at Amnesty Norway says to news. He emphasizes that Fifa has not followed up on the report. In an email to news, Fifa replies that they are now following up on the new report from Amnesty. Both the WC organizer’s own ministry for labor rights and the Doha office of the ILO, the international workers’ organisation, have been notified of the debts to the security guards. Fifa nevertheless underlines that it is the company and the governing authorities in Qatar that are responsible for the migrant workers. 38 days in a row Conde Tandberg also tells about migrant workers who were promised working conditions that were not fulfilled. For that reason, they had to take out a loan to afford the illegal recruitment fee. They also had to work 12-hour days, for up to 38 days straight, without a break. Nevertheless, they could not organize themselves, he points out. Frank Conde Tangberg, project manager at Amnesty Norway Photo: Private – If they tried to complain, they were met with threats of reprisals. So several of them were sent home after the intermediary contract stopped, and have not received compensation for these human rights violations, says Conde Tandberg. But this has happened both before, during and after the WC, underlines Conde Tandberg. – What has been the problem for Fifa all along is that they have not investigated what kind of human rights risks it was to have the World Cup in Qatar. It has led to serious human rights violations on a large scale and they have not done enough to ensure that there are mitigating measures, i.e. to reduce the risk of human rights violations, he says. – Work from morning to night The Business & Human Rights Resource Center has also recently published a report on the recruitment practices and living conditions of the migrant workers during the World Cup. It shows that almost all of the 80 migrant workers who took part in the survey have paid illegal recruitment fees. Two out of three are in debt to banks, family or friends to cover the costs. Migrant workers in the port of Doha just before the World Cup started in November. Photo: AP They have also been exposed to terrible working conditions, wage theft, lack of overtime pay, contracts other than the law, and also lower wages than agreed. One of the interviewed migrant workers says in the report: – I had to work from morning to night. In accordance with the contract, I was supposed to work eight hours a day and six days a week. But for the first three months I had to work up to ten hours a day. Later, working hours increased to 14 hours a day. He tells in the report that after the World Cup the employer asked him to work 17 hours a day, without overtime pay. – I refuse to work under such conditions, says the migrant worker, according to the report. He went to his native country. On the basis of the interviews, the report also concludes that it is clear that the companies have systematically failed to take care of, or reduce the risks that the workers have been exposed to. The governing authorities in Qatar do not answer news directly about the debts in the reports from the human rights organisations. They state that 97% of approved workers are guaranteed the right salary at the right time and that rogue companies are punished with fines. Qatar says it has no legal authority to intervene when migrant workers take out loans in their home countries. Missing the stars Malcolm Bidali brought with him both Norway’s and Germany’s human rights markings ahead of the football World Cup in Qatar. He thinks it was good for drawing attention to the situation in the host country. Lionel Messi became the big profile in the World Cup final. Here he received the World Cup trophy from FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani after the World Cup final in Qatar. Photo: AFP But he lacks commitment from the big stars. – Another thing is that profiled football players take a stand, that they actually make a statement. Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, all these people. It’s just a matter of a message on Twitter or a post to increase awareness. I don’t understand why they don’t do it, concludes Bidali.
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Crushing report after the World Cup in Qatar – Amnesty with clear encouragement to FIFA – news Sport – Sports news, results and broadcasting schedule
