Posts Tagged ‘deaths per goal’

It is time to take the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar

June 1, 2014

If FIFA is to retain any semblance of credibility they need to re-run the selection process for the 2022 World Cup. This time without Qatar participating.  That won’t stop the corruption of course but at least it could clean out the stable before it is despoiled again.

The latest revelations in the Sunday Times (paywalled but reported by the BBC) merely confirm that Qatar did buy selection.

BBC:

Fifa is facing fresh allegations of corruption over its controversial decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

The Sunday Times  has obtained millions of secret documents – emails, letters and bank transfers – which it alleges are proof that the disgraced Qatari football official Mohamed Bin Hammam made payments totalling $5m to football officials in return for their support for the Qatar bid.

…….. the Sunday Times alleges Bin Hammam’s strategy was to win a groundswell of support for the Qatari bid which would then influence the four African Fifa executive committee members who were able to take part in the election.

The Sunday Times also alleges that it has documents which prove Bin Hammam paid 305,000 Euros (£250,000) to cover the legal expenses of another former Fifa executive committee member from Oceania, Reynald Temarii.

Temarii, from Tahiti, was unable to vote in the contest as he had already been suspended by Fifa after he was caught out by a Sunday Times sting asking bogus American bid officials for money in return for his support.

But the paper now alleges that Bin Hammam provided him with financial assistance to allow him to appeal against the Fifa suspension, delaying his removal from the executive committee and blocking his deputy David Chung from voting in the 2022 election.

The paper claims that had Chung been allowed to vote he would have supported Qatar’s rivals Australia. Instead there was no representative from Oceania allowed to vote, a decision which may have influenced the outcome in Qatar’s favour. The paper also makes fresh allegations about the relationship between Bin Hammam and his disgraced Fifa ally Jack Warner, from Trinidad. ….. 

That Qatar bought its selection was already known.

But what now becomes obvious is that many of the FIFA officials currently in power and including Sepp Blatter have known about this for some time. Some of them were probably involved themselves.

A Qatar World Cup will probably break all records in the number of deaths per goals scored. The competition will probably have to be shifted to the winter.

It is time for FIFA and Sepp Blatter to bite the bullet and take the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar. Blatter will probably try to pin the blame for Qatar on Michel Platini.

It would be best if neither Platini or Blatter stood for the FIFA Presidency next year.

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FIFA/Qatar on track to achieve 6 deaths per goal for 2022 World Cup

January 25, 2014

Just a few days ago we had the report about atrocities by the Assad regime in Syria commisioned by the Government of Qatar which supports some of the rebel groups in Syria. The report was released on the eve of the Geneva II peace talks.

But at home the Qatar government is cracking the whip to get construction completed for the 2022 FIFA World Cup and in the process has been complicit in the death of at least 193 Nepalese construction workers just during 2013. FIFA makes the appropriate noises but effectively turns a blind eye. They have too much money at stake. In October last year I posted

Based on the track record of World Cup Tournaments, the Qatar 2022 championship will see between 100 and 180 goals – most likely around 150.

But this number will be easily exceeded by the number of construction workers who have been killed by then. Already over 70 Nepalese workers have died since 2012 and the total number is probably around 200. By 2022 this number will exceed 1000.

Perhaps FIFA could introduce a safety performance index for the Qatar World Cup? Maybe to have less than 6 deaths per goal?

The Government of Qatar does not fill me with any sense of operating in good faith and certainly not with any confidence – either for peace in the Middle East or for the 2022 World Cup. They don’t really care how many second-class, immigrant workers lose their lives in any case. But FIFA has no excuse. They are going to easily achieve about 6 deaths/goal for the 2022 World Cup. FIFA is already in the dock for some of the condition of construction workers in Brazil  for the 2014 championship, but they should break all records in Qatar. There are 8 years to go and the risk is that by then deaths will exceed 10 per goal for the Qatar championship. Both FIFA and Qatar have blood on their hands.

The Guardian:

The extent of the risks faced by migrant construction workers building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been laid bare by official documents revealing that 185 Nepalese men died last year alone.

The 2013 death toll, which is expected to rise as new cases come to light, is likely to spark fresh concern over the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar and increase the pressure on Fifa to force meaningful change. According to the documents the total number of verified deaths among workers from Nepal – just one of several countries that supply hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to the gas-rich state – is now at least 382 in two years alone. At least 36 of those deaths were registered in the weeks following the global outcry after the Guardian’s original revelations in September. …

… The revelations forced Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, to promise that football would not turn a blind eye to the issue following a stormy executive committee meeting. …… 

The Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee (PNCC), which has cross-checked the figures from official sources in Doha against death certificates and passports, is still receiving new cases on a regular basis. The Guardian has seen evidence of at least a further eight cases, which would take the 2013 total to 193.

The PNCC called on Fifa’s sponsors to reconsider their relationship with world football’s governing body, which awarded the World Cup to Qatar in December 2010. “Fifa and the government of Qatar promised the world that they would take action to ensure the safety of workers building the stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup. This horrendous roll call of the dead gives the lie to those reassurances,” said the PNCC. ….. 

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Qatar 2022 will achieve more deaths than goals

October 2, 2013

Based on the track record of World Cup Tournaments, the Qatar 2022 championship will see between 100 and 180 goals – most likely around 150.

But this number will be easily exceeded by the number of construction workers who have been killed by then. Already over 70 Nepalese workers have died since 2012 and the total number is probably around 200. By 2022 this number will exceed 1000.

Perhaps FIFA could introduce a safety performance index for the Qatar World Cup? Maybe to have less than 6 deaths per goal?

The Guardian:

Seventy Nepalese builders working in Qatar in the runup to the 2022 football World Cup have died on construction sites since the start of 2012.

Fifteen have died this year, according to a death toll announced by Nepal government representatives in Doha. It is the clearest official data yet on the dangers facing 1.2 million migrant workers in the Gulf kingdom during the $100bn (£62bn)construction drive before the World Cup and came as David Cameron called on Qatar’s leadership to take action. He said zero deaths on the London 2012 Olypmics project showed Doha “it can be done”.

Nepalese trade unions said many of the fatalities were caused by workers without proper safety equipment toppling from the upper floors of buildings. …..

There are 340,000 Nepali workers in Qatar and if the mortality rate was extrapolated across all migrant workers it would suggest that more than 200 foreign workers could have died on Qatari building sites since the start of 2012.

“This reminds us of the industrial revolution 150 years ago,” said Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation. “Young healthy men are being worked to death in Qatar. Scores are dying from heat exhaustion and dehydration after 12-hour shifts in blazing heat, often during the night in the squalid and cramped labour camps with no ventilation and appalling hygiene.”

Last week the Guardian reported that documents showed 44 Nepalese workers died in Qatar between 4 June and 8 August this year, and that more than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents. It said evidence of exploitation and abuses pointed to “modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation”.

Of course the Qatari government claims that all these numbers are exaggerated, but the reality is that the lives and working conditions of their “guest workers” is of little interest for the Qataris. Foreign workers are expendable and the supply of such workers is endless. In this they are happily supported by the manpower agencies – in Qatar and abroad – whose revenue depends upon the turnover of bodies. Perversely the death of a worker only leads to additional revenue for the agencies who find his replacement. From what I have heard from one such manpower agenciy in India, they get paid for fulfilling their quota of workers to the main contractor of the construction project. They merely deliver bodies to Qatar and the construction site. They only perform a cursory check on the suitability or the abilities of the workers. Two arms and two legs generally seems to enough.

These agencies then pay a cut of their fee to a Qatari owned agency in Qatar and that cut includes the amounts which are passed up the Qatari chain. The construction company in its turn pays an agreed amount for having obtained the contract to the same Qatari chain of beneficiaries – often through the same Qatari agency. The modes of doing business in Qatar are no great secret.

And FIFA buries its head in the sands.

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