Deepak, whose name was changed like all of Amnesty’s sources to protect them from reprisals, works as a metalworker at Khalifi Stadium on the outskirts of Doha. It’s tough work, he says. “My life here is like a prison… When I first complained about my situation, soon after arriving in Qatar, the manager said, ‘If you complain, you can bet there will be consequences. If you want to stay in Qatar, be quiet and keep working.’ Now I am forced to stay in Qatar and continue working.”

He was one of 132 construction workers and 99 landscape workers, all migrants, working on the stadium or the Aspire Zone complex where it’s situated, who spoke to Amnesty between February 2015 and February 2016. The result is the organisation’s new report, The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Exploitation of Migrant Workers on a Qatar 2022 World Cup Site.

Since 2010, when Fifa announced Qatar would host the World Cup, the organisation, along with the country and the contractors preparing for the event, have been criticised for committing abuses against migrant workers. Over 90 percent of Qatar’s workforce is comprised of migrant labour, mostly from South Asia. While abuses are widespread, Amnesty’s new report shows how little has changed while the spotlight has been on Qatar.

Every one of the 231 workers interviewed for the report noted rights violations. Most migrants worked for either construction contractor Eversendai or landscaping company Nakheel, with some employed by smaller labour supply companies, and they noted abuses in pay and conditions, forced labour and poor living standards.

The challenges begin in the labour-sending countries where every single interviewee Amnesty spoke to said they paid recruitment fees, between $500 and $4,300. That’s against Qatar’s laws but workers are charged in their home countries. Amnesty found that workers usually take out a loan, with interest, leaving them with little to send home to their families while they pay it off. It also ties them to the job even if they want to leave because of poor conditions.

“I’m poor. I have no money, no job, no land. I had to take a loan to get this job because I had to find work. I am still paying off the loan. That leaves very little to send back to my family – but what else can I do?” gardener Rahman told the organisation.

When the workers arrive in Qatar, their passports are usually taken by the employer. That’s also illegal in Qatar but common for migrant workers. Amnesty noted that many workers are then made to do jobs they didn’t sign up for, with less pay. If they complain, employers try to intimidate them, saying they won’t get their passports back, won’t let them leave, or alternatively will have them arrested or deported.

“My manager just said, ‘I don’t care what they said in Bangladesh. We are giving you this salary and nothing more. If you keep talking like this I’ll tell them to cancel your visa and send you back’,” Mushfiqur, a migrant worker, told Amnesty of the time he complained. Those the organisation spoke to regularly had salaries in arrears of four or even 10 months. One worker’s family lost their home because he couldn’t send money because his pay was so late. That late pay also makes workers scared of leaving their jobs as they’re worried about not getting what they’re owed.

Amnesty says the central problem is the sponsorship system. Migrants need employer sponsorship to work in Qatar, but it makes them beholden to the employer if the country’s laws aren’t upheld. Workers can’t leave the country without their sponsors’ permission as the sponsor must grant them an exit permit. Migrants wanting to go home to Nepal after the recent earthquake to check on their families were denied permits, as were others fed up with their jobs. Workers are also often denied residency permits, without which they can be detained, so their lives in Qatar revolve only around work and the labour camps.

Alok, working on scaffolding at the Khalifa Stadium refurbishment, wanted to return to India. “When I went to the office, the manager screamed at me, saying, ‘Keep working or you will never leave’… What more can I do now, I cannot leave here because the police will take me away [as an absconded worker] and only my manager can send me home,” he told Amnesty.

Work at Qatar’s World Cup sites is carried out by the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, set up by the government, which works with the Aspire Zone Foundation, established by Emiri decree. For the Khalifa Stadium refurbishments, the Foundation appointed a joint-venture – Qatari construction firm Midmac and Six Contract, a subsidiary of Belgium’s Besix, to carry out the work.

Perhaps the most reported issue on Qatar’s migrant workers preparing the World Cup venues has been their living conditions. With the international attention, a number of companies have upgraded the workers’ camps from what was reported as conditions of undignified squallor and the Supreme Committee has established new living standards. Nevertheless, Amnesty said all the labour camps it visited for workers at Khalifa breached the regulations.

“The government’s failure to respond to evi­dence of abuse of human rights and interna­tional labour standards, including evidence of forced labour and the existence of serious risk factors for forced labour, such as paying salaries many months in arrears, is a flagrant breach of its legal obligations under these conventions,” said Amnesty. It called the government response “apathetic at best”.

At least the Qatari state is pretending to try. Fifa is still formalising its human rights due diligence process in Qatar, despite probably having known about the potential abuse of migrant workers when awarding the country the World Cup. Fifa said it had conducted an audit of payment records of companies contracted by the Supreme Committee, but didn’t respond to other cases of rights abuse found by Amnesty.

“Overall, Amnesty International found Fifa’s response failed to demonstrate any genuine commitment to ensuring the rights of migrant workers on World Cup sites are not abused,” said the organisation.

Essentially, the ongoing focus on distressed migrant workers in Qatar has led to slight improvements. Yet the abuses are set to continue. “Given the approach of the authorities to abuse on a World Cup site, there is little hope that the 2022 Fifa World Cup can be delivered without many more such abuses occurring,” the Amnesty report concludes. DM

Photo: A picture made available on 22 April 2015 of a football goal at a beach in front of the skyline of Doha, Qatar, 21 April 2015. Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. EPA/KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND.