Chief of Qatar's World Cup organisation Al-Thawadi
“Between 400 and 500” workers died while working for FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar, the host country's World Cup Chief Al-Thawadi revealed during an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan.
He also went on to clarify that the number marks the total number of deaths related to the World Cup activity, including building hotels and other infrastructure) in Qatar, ever since it won the bid in 2010.
Al-Thawadi pegged the number of migrant worker deaths related to the building of the World Cup stadiums in the last 12 years at 40.
In the interview, portions of which Morgan posted online, the British journalist asks al-Thawadi: "What is the honest, realistic total do you think of migrant workers who died from – as a result of work they’re doing for the World Cup in totality?”
“The estimate is around 400, between 400 and 500," al-Thawadi responds. "I don’t have the exact number. That’s something that’s been discussed.”
Al-Thawadi pointed to those figures when discussing work just on stadiums in the interview, right before offering the “between 400 to 500” death toll for all the infrastructure for the tournament.
On being asked how many migrant workers have died while working for the World Cup Stadiums, Al-Thawadi said, "There were three work-related deaths and 37 non-work-related deaths."
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 29, 2022
The revelation comes amid accusations of massive human rights violation being made by different countries against Qatar.
It also threatened to reinvigorate criticism by human rights groups over the toll of hosting the Middle East's first World Cup for the migrant labourers that built over $200 billion worth of stadiums, metro lines, and new infrastructure needed for the tournament.
Since FIFA awarded the tournament to Qatar in 2010, the country has taken some steps to overhaul the country’s employment practices such as eliminating its so-called kafala employment system, which tied workers to their employers, and adopting a minimum monthly wage of 1,000 Qatari riyals ($275) for workers and required food and housing allowances for employees not receiving those benefits directly from their employers.
It also has updated its worker safety rules to prevent deaths.
“One death is a death too many. Plain and simple,” Al-Thawadi said in the interview.
But, activists have called on Doha to do more, particularly when it comes to ensuring workers receive their salaries on time and are protected from abusive employers.
“This is just the latest example of Qatar’s inexcusable lack of transparency on the issues of workers’ deaths," said Nicholas McGeehan of Fairsquare, a London-based group which advocates for migrant workers in the Middle East. “We need proper data and thorough investigations, not vague figures announced through media interviews.
"FIFA and Qatar still have a lot of questions to answer, not least where, when, and how did these men die and did their families receive compensation.”
Mustafa Qadri, the executive director of Equidem Research, a labor consultancy that has published reports on the toll of the construction on migrant laborers, also said he was surprised by al-Thawadi's remark.
“For him now to come and say there is hundreds, it’s shocking,” he told The Associated Press. “They have no idea what’s going on.”
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