International concern is growing over the appalling working conditions of workers building infrastructure for the 2022 soccer World Cup in Qatar after it was confirmed that more than 500 Indian migrant workers have died in the country since January 2012.

Trade unions raised the issue in the European Parliament this week as unions, human rights groups and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) gave evidence about the need for union representation for migrant workers in the gulf state.


International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) general secretary Sharon Burrow told parliamentarians that Qatar was a slave state for 1.4 million migrant workers. “It doesn't have to be that way. Qatar chooses to build its modern nation with the labour of migrant workers and deliberately chooses to maintain a system that treats them as less than human,” she said.

The ITUC has estimated that up to 4,000 workers – a dozen a week – could be expected to die by the time a ball is kicked. Employers in Qatar have the legal right to withhold exit visas from the 1.3 million migrant workers drafted in to build World Cup stadiums and infrastructure. The resulting list of human rights violations includes excessive working hours, extreme heat with no access to drinking water, hazardous working conditions, workers going unpaid for months, the confiscation of passports, overcrowded labour camps, and a prohibition on joining or forming trade unions.

Last September, the Guardian newspaper reported that 44 Nepalese workers died of heart failure and workplace accidents in just one three-month period, after being forced to work in daytime heat of 50 degrees. Construction firms can easily replace them as thousands more desperate migrant workers are expected to flock to join the state’s construction frenzy before 2022.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has rejected trade union anger over the failure of ministers to raise human rights concerns on a recent trade trip to gulf states. He was responding to  an earlier complaint from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.