Nepal’s labor minister this week blasted the government of Qatar for not letting Nepalese migrant workers return home for funerals of those who died in the earthquake that rocked the country in late April. Qatar has allowed some workers to return to Nepal briefly, but has denied that opportunity to those working on construction projects related to the 2022 World Cup, The Guardian reported.
“After the earthquake of 25 April, we requested all companies in Qatar to give their Nepalese workers special leave and pay for their air fare home,” Tek Bahadur Gurung, the Nepal labor minister, said. “While workers in some sectors of the economy have been given this, those on World Cup construction sites are not being allowed to leave because of the pressure to complete projects on time.
“They have lost relatives and their homes and are enduring very difficult conditions in Qatar. This is adding to their suffering.”
The Qatari government said that it had given more than 500 workers permission to return to Nepal temporarily (under the country’s labor system, workers cannot leave Qatar without permission from their employers or the government), but Gurung countered that there are “far more than 500 Nepalese working on different World Cup construction sites.”
Nepalese migrant workers make up a significant portion of Qatar’s labor force and have suffered some of the worst consequences of the country’s restrictive labor system, which international organizations have likened to “modern slavery.” A 2014 report from the International Trade Union Confederation estimated that 4,000 migrant workers could die as part of the World Cup construction efforts; in December, The Guardian revealed government documents showing that Nepalese workers died at a rate of one every two days last year.
Gurung said the Nepal government wants to work with “the Qatari government and bodies like FIFA,” international soccer’s governing body, to improve working conditions for laborers. FIFA president Sepp Blatter, however, has largely remained silent on the problems facing the nation’s migrant workers since it awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Blatter has previously said that businesses in Qatar “are responsible for their workers and not FIFA.” He has also lauded the country for producing “better conditions” for workers.
But despite announcing reforms to its labor system last year, Qatar has made little progress in actually instituting them, according to international labor and human rights groups. One recent estimate showed that 62 workers would die for each World Cup game played in the country.
Amid pressure from activists, Coca-Cola, Visa, and Adidas, three of FIFA’s biggest corporate sponsors, last week issued statements saying that they were concerned about working conditions in Qatar. None, however, has suggested that its sponsorship would be affected in the absence of major reforms before the World Cup.