A bunch of greater than 200 migrant laborers employed to work concession stalls on the Qatar World Cup’s opening recreation mentioned that they had been left with out meals, water and bathroom services for seven hours whereas they waited for his or her assignments.
Standing in entrance of the Bedouin-tent-shaped Al Bayt stadium in Al Khor, the group have been desperately attempting to contact their employer with out success. A number of mentioned that they had been requested to report back to a facility near the sector earlier than 10 a.m., 9 hours earlier than the sport was scheduled to start out.
The group, largely manufactured from males from India, mentioned that they had signed contracts to work on the World Cup that assured one meal a day and slightly below $1,000 for 55 days. “It’s a really unhealthy expertise,” mentioned one member of the group. The employee declined to present his identify out of concern that it will upset his employers, however added, “Our coordinator instructed us to return right here earlier than 9 a.m. however nobody was right here.”
The group of concession employees have been only a tiny a part of the military of low-paid employees Qatar has employed to organize the nation to host the World Cup. The remedy of employees in Qatar and elsewhere within the Gulf has drawn a lot scrutiny within the yearslong buildup to the occasion. Human rights teams estimating a number of thousand migrants have died because of accidents, heat-related issues and different well being issues as Qatar launched into a $200 billion reconstruction to organize for the one-month event. Qatar strongly disputes that whole, and notes that it has made reforms to its labor legal guidelines.
The concession employees weren’t the one ones left pissed off beneath the recent desert solar on Sunday: A bunch of 20 girls from the Philippines, employed to promote scarves, discovered themselves in an identical state of affairs: Three hours after arriving on the stadium, that they had been unable to find the corporate that employed them. “We’ve walked a lot, this isn’t good,” mentioned one of many girls. They, too, have been attempting to contact representatives of their firm with out success.