Around "1,400" Nepali migrant workers have died while helping to build football stadiums for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a shock TV documentary has exposed.
The accidents took place at construction sites, as well as bad living conditions in Doha, are claiming around 110 lives every year, according to Nepali government figures.
Victims' families told German broadcaster "WDR" that they had received no compensation from Doha for their tragic losses.
An investigative documentary, titled “Trapped in Qatar” has been issued by WDR on Friday, it exposed the harrowing plight of workers forced to live in crowded camps without many basic human needs.
Although Nepal exerted many efforts to discourage its citizens from heading to Qatar for work, many still leave in the hope of finding better-paid jobs.
Dil Prasad, a Nepali worker, stated: “We are captured, and every day we nourish ourselves on water and bread. Without money we can’t do anything else. Month on month our situation gets worse. I’m not sure how much longer I can do it. I just want to go home. We can’t even call our families in Nepal.” Dinesh Regimi, a Kathmandu-based journalist who spent three years in Qatar as a reporter, said conditions for Nepali workers had not improved since Doha won its bid to stage the prestigious football competition almost a decade ago.
Regimi added: “When I was there few years ago, I saw only suffering of Nepali workers who migrated to that inhospitable country with lots of hope. They were denied a basic salary, their living conditions were very bad and there was always a long queue (of migrant workers) in the Nepali embassy in Doha seeking relief and intervention”.
He also stated: “The migrants faced difficulties returning home. Some died while working, some passed away while sleeping. The heat and living conditions claimed many lives. The Qatari government would not conduct any post-mortems on these workers.I can vouch for 150 deaths per year. For me it was difficult to see the pain of the workers.”
Regimi went to Nepal in 2017 in order to meet families who had lost loved ones working in Qatar.
In 2015, Kishore Tamang, from the Bara district of Nepal, travelled to Qatar hoping to earn enough money to pay off family debts. But within a year he was dead, after being killed in a fall from a wall at a new football stadium being built for the World Cup. No compensation was paid to his family.
Within six months of arriving in Qatar, Jagat Nepali, from the Nuwakot district, suffered a cardiac arrest brought on, his relatives said, by the intolerable heat and poor living conditions in the migrant workers’ camp.
An official from Nepali Department of Immigration said: “We are aware of the situation in Qatar and the difficulties Nepali workers face there. We try to discourage people from going to such places.”
