One year ago, things were looking up for Shakir Ullah Khan. The World Cup in Qatar was about to kick off, and Khan had travelled from Pakistan to Qatar and had found a prestigious job as a security guard at the tournament. “I was happy to join a big organisation like Fifa,” says Khan. But it did not last. “Once we started work … all my hopes turned to mud.”
Sweeping labour reforms put in place after the international community condemned the deaths and exploitation of migrant workers building Qatar’s World cup dream were supposed to be the lasting legacy of the tournament. Instead, one year on, migrant workers in Qatar say that life is no better for those left behind.
The Qatari authorities and Fifa have claimed otherwise, with the Fifa president Gianni Infantino describing the event as “the best World Cup ever”.
A spokesperson for the Qatar government said the event “accelerated labour reforms in Qatar, creating a significant and lasting tournament legacy”.
Workers now benefit from a minimum wage, the freedom to change jobs, a simplified complaints mechanism with easier access to justice, and improved health and safety standards, the spokesperson said, adding: “One year on from the World Cup, Qatar’s commitment to labour reform remains as strong as ever.”
The UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), which has been working in partnership with the Qatari authorities since 2018 to reform its labour system, is equally bullish. It says it has “witnessed continued commitment from, and cooperation with” the Qatari authorities since the World Cup.
Amnesty International launched a report on Thursday that tells a different story, claiming that progress on implementing Qatar’s new labour laws has stalled since the World Cup.
Ella Knight, Amnesty International’s migrant labour rights researcher, says low-wage workers “still face huge risks of exploitation today, including of forced labour, and the prospect of remedy and compensation for abuses is a faint hope for many”.
Khan says that shortly before the start of last year’s tournament, he and hundreds of other workers had been hired by a local private security company contracted to provide security at a number of key World Cup facilities.
They understood they had been employed for six months – and documents and contracts seen by the Guardian support these claims – but just days after the final, they were suddenly fired, with about three months left to work.
When they tried to negotiate for their outstanding wages at offices linked to the company, hundreds of workers were detained or deported.
Khan and two colleagues were charged with organising a gathering without permission, sentenced to six months in prison and fined 10,000 rials (£2,205). Khan was released in August. One of his colleagues was not freed until 1 November, having been detained for more than nine months.
Today, Khan is still in Qatar, struggling to renew his official documents, without which he is unable to work or even safely leave the overcrowded room he shares with six others. “Sometimes I don’t eat for one or two days because I can’t work and I have no money,” he says. “I can’t see any solution.”
Wage theft (the non-payment of wages or benefits) continues to be “rampant” while solutions are “ineffective and inadequate” says Migrant-rights.org, which advocates for workers’ rights in the Gulf.
The ILO’s annual progress report, released this week, reveals that in the past year, about 1.14bn rials (£250m) has been paid out to workers through a government fund set up to cover workers’ unpaid wages and support companies struggling to pay their workers.
The assurances of the Qatari authorities sound hollow to Saikou Colley, a teenager from the Gambia who also signed up to work for the same security company on the eve of the World Cup. Colley and two friends from home paid local agents huge sums to come to Qatar, drawn by the “life-changing opportunities” offered by the tournament.
But like Khan, just days after the final, they were suddenly left jobless and homeless. The three were eventually referred to a government shelter, which turned out to be more “like a prison”.
A year later, Colley is still in Qatar, fighting for compensation through the courts, and worrying about his family back home.
In August, despite having no legal representation, the teenagers won their cases and Colley was awarded 21,000 rials (£4,640) to cover his unpaid wages and the cost of his flight home. His sponsor has appealed against the judgment so he remains trapped, desperate to go home but unwilling to give up on his compensation.
“I blame Fifa and the Qatari government. If they had stood by their words and imposed penalties on those that violate basic human rights, we wouldn’t have got to this place,” says Colley.
Fifa earned a record $7.5bn (£4.6bn) in the four-year cycle leading up to the Qatar World Cup, but it has yet to announce the results of a review, launched at the Fifa Congress in March, into whether the steps it has taken to provide remedy to workers who suffered abuses linked to the tournament are in line with its human rights commitments.
For workers such as Colley, that cannot come soon enough. Earlier this week, he returned to court to pursue his compensation, only to learn that a decision was once again postponed. “If we had known [how long it would take] we wouldn’t have stayed because there is no future here in Qatar,” says Colley. “There’s only pain and suffering.”
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