Amnesty urges FIFA to match workers’ compensation to World Cup prize fund
GENEVA: Amnesty International remains as persistent as ever in pressing world football federation FIFA on the issue of pay and conditions for immigrant construction workers who have built Qatar’s World Cup-staging infrastructure.
An open letter sent to president Gianni Infantino from Amnesty and other human rights groups insisted FIFA and the Gulf state should “establish a comprehensive programme to ensure all labour abuses to which FIFA contributed are remedied.”
A statement added: “With six months until the opening of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have not received adequate remedy, including financial compensation, for serious labour abuses they suffered while building and servicing infrastructure essential for the preparation and delivery of the World Cup in Qatar.
“FIFA should reserve an amount not less than the US$440 million prize money offered to teams participating in the World Cup, to be invested in funds to support remediation.”
The letter also said Qatari authorities had “failed to investigate the causes of deaths of thousands of migrant workers since 2010.”
Amnesty acknowledged progress made to protect workers’ rights but said help had come too late and that the former kafala sponsorship system had allowed “unscrupulous employers to abuse migrant workers with impunity.”
Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty, said: “While it may be too late to erase the suffering of past abuses, FIFA and Qatar can and should act to provide redress and prevent further abuses from taking place.
“Providing compensation to workers who gave so much to make the tournament happen, and taking steps to make sure such abuses never happen again, could represent a major turning point in FIFA’s commitment to respect human rights.”
FIFA said it welcomed Amnesty’s acknowledgment of labor reforms within the country and said it, alongside Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), was “implementing an unprecedented due diligence process” in relation to protecting workers involved in World Cup preparations.
It also said it was “currently assessing the programme proposed by Amnesty International” but that the report covered “a wide range of non-FIFA World Cup-specific public infrastructure built since 2010.”
FIFA added: “When companies working in relation to the FIFA World Cup breach their obligations, FIFA and the SC work to ensure the wrong is made right by the entity that caused the impact, usually the company employing the respective worker.
“As a consequence of the Workers’ Welfare initiatives by the tournament organisers, countless workers have received remediation in various forms, including the payment of outstanding wages, the repayment of recruitment fees through the SC’s universal reimbursement scheme and other forms of compensation.
“As part of the SC’s effort to ensure repayment of recruitment fees, for example, workers have received payments of a total of $22.6 million as at December 2021, with an additional $5.7 million committed by contractors.
“Other forms of remediation include the strengthening of company practice to ensure non-repetition, or punitive measures imposed by the tournament organisers or the Ministry of Labour.”
#########
