Overcrowded conditions are thought to be contributing to high death toll among workers building 2022 World Cup facilities

A new generation of “humane” homes for more than 50,000 migrant workers building Qatar’s 2022 football World Cup facilities has been delayed in the Gulf state’s planning system, the Guardian has learned.

British consultants have been working with a US developer to build improved accommodation with health centres, shops, recreational areas and even psychologists’ consulting rooms as an alternative to squalid and overcrowded conditions which are believed to contribute to a high death toll among migrant labourers. The project was due to open its first beds in April but that is not likely to happen now until at least July as the Qatar authorities have failed to agree a streamlined planning process to speed through delivery. The delay has been attributed locally to the emirate’s slow bureaucracy.

It comes after the Guardian on Friday revealed 185 workers from Nepal had died in Qatar in 2013, sparking complaints from workers’ rights groups that Qatar is failing to follow through on its pledges to take action.

It also emerged on Monday that Fifa had asked human rights groups to submit practical proposals to improve the working conditions of migrant workers. Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and the International Trade Union Confederation will provide advice. Football’s governing body said over the weekend that “fair working conditions with a lasting effect must be introduced quickly, consistently and on a sustained basis in Qatar”.

The Nepalese make up about a sixth of Qatar’s 2 million migrant workers. Death rates among those from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are yet to emerge and thousands of workers continue to endure overcrowded and insanitary living conditions in labour camps where a dozen people routinely sleep in one room. The delayed “humane” housing is based on three-bedroom homes with a limit of four workers to a room.

“We have been talking to the authorities, but we have no commitment from them on [a streamlined planning system],” said Simon Trafford, director of Quantex Qatar, which is working on the project. “One would like to think this will improve because things can be quite prolonged.”

Trade unions have warned that the death toll could reach 4,000 by the time the first ball is kicked. Amnesty’s general secretary, Salil Shetty, last year complained that some workers were being “ruthlessly exploited, deprived of their pay and left struggling to survive”.

Late last year Hassan al-Thawadi, head of the 2022 organising committee, pledged to work to stop the death toll and said the “kefala” system, which ties workers to their employers, was being reformed.

“For us any number [of deaths] above zero is unacceptable and we are working to make sure that stays that way,” he said.

Trafford, who is based in Doha, said that despite the delay there was evidence the Qatar government was taking the issue of human rights seriously. He said the ministry of municipality and urban planning, which is tasked with procuring new labour camps for tens of thousands of new migrant workers, has been co-ordinating with the Qatar Foundation, a government-linked not-for-profit organisation that has drawn up welfare standards for the humane treatment of migrant workers.

It issued a tender last month for a 28,000-person labour camp in 7,000-bed “villages”. The document for the “permanent male integrated workers’ community” says the workers will be accommodated on a single site in seven 4,000-strong compounds each “self-sufficient in operational assets such as food provision and consumption, laundry, general cleaning, parking areas, open areas, shops, recreation and cultural facilities as required by labour, health, environment and other authorities”.

It does not specify living standards but says further information will be provided later in the procurement process.

HRW said references to “worker welfare” in the document were too vague.

“The Guardian’s revelations on worker deaths in 2013 confirm yet again the often tragic effect on young men of a highly exploitative labour system and a construction sector beset by a culture of impunity,” said Nicholas McGeehan, a gulf researcher at HRW. “Better housing is a must and we support projects aimed at housing workers in a manner that affords them their basic dignity, but it won’t protect migrant workers from exploitation. Indeed if initiatives to improve housing are not accompanied by key labour reforms, their effect will simply be to make people less uncomfortable about workers’ exploitation.”

• Qatar
• Migration
• Nepal
• Employment
• Middle East and North Africa
• World Cup 2022

Robert Booth
Owen Gibson

theguardian.com