Building glory over corpses: Horrible testimonies of World Cup 2022 stadium workers

Ahmed Adel

An investigation by the German WDR1 channel revealed painful facts about the situation of foreign workers in Qatar who are used to build football stadiums as part of Doha’s preparations for hosting the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Journalists were able to interview many workers and collect confidential information about the Qatari government’s practices towards them. It started with the popular Al-Attiyah Market in Doha, where there are about 2 million expatriates from Nepal, India and Bangladesh.

There was one answer to the question posed by journalists about living conditions in Qatar: life in Doha is a prison, and there is a big problem with delayed salaries, poor housing and confiscated passports.

Some reported that they may sometimes have to sleep in public toilets or near garbage dumps, are subjected to severe intimidation by their superiors in private as well as government institutions, and are prevented from communicating with their families by telephone.

Painful stories

“We are in a big prison here. The food we eat is water and bread. We are treated as animals and we cannot communicate with our families,” said a Nepalese worker in Qatar, adding that their economic and living conditions are deteriorating. He asked God to return him to his home country again, saying that he can’t stand to remain in a country that is neither humane nor compassionate.

Another worker from Nepal also confirmed that they have not received their salaries, even after having repeatedly asked for them from the labor affairs department.

Journalists had submitted official requests to the Qatari authorities to meet with the workers, but they were surprised that they had sent them to a clean labor camp where workers were taught to talk about Qatar positively.

The workers tried to communicate with the company and the Qatari government, but received no responses. One worker explained that he had not been able to get his salary for eight months due to the severe financial crisis in Qatar, which his wife confirmed when the press team visited her in Nepal.

Nepalese authorities have said that 1,426 Nepalese workers had died in Qatar between 2009 and 2019.