Doha, June 3 (IANS) Terming recent media reports “untrue”, the government of Qatar, which will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in a statement denied that Indian and Nepali workers’ have died during construction work and said that not a single life has been lost.
An article in the Washington Post on May 27 headlined “The human toll of FIFA’s corruption” claimed that 4,000 workers are likely to die while working on World Cup sites, and that some 1,200 have already lost their lives.
“It appears that the Post simply took the total annual mortality figures for Indian and Nepali migrants working in Qatar and multiplied those numbers by the years remaining between now and the 2022 World Cup — a calculation which assumes that the death of every migrant worker in Qatar was work-related,” said the Qatari government statement issued on Tuesday.
A Qatari government spokesman believes the country has suffered reputational damage because of the “myth” perpetrated by the Post blog.
A letter sent to the Washington Post by Saif Al Thani of the Qatari government communications office complains that a previous letter sent to the editor for publication had not been used.
It states: “As a result of the Post’s online article, readers around the world have now been led to believe that thousands of migrant workers in Qatar have perished, or will perish, building the facilities for World Cup 2022 — a claim that has absolutely no basis in fact”.
The spokesperson wants the Post to take down the article.