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2 April 2016
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1 April 2016 | MYT 6:28 PM
Eversendai refutes labour abuses in World Cup project
PETALING JAYA: Malaysian company Eversendai Corp Bhd has denied an Amnesty International report accusing it of human rights abuses in a Qatar 2022 World Cup project.
The report, The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game, alleges that Eversendai workers at the Khalifa International Stadium have been subjected to abuses like passport confiscation and dirty and crammed accommodation.
In a statement released on Friday, Eversendai said it only held workers’ passports if they specifically asked to do so for safekeeping.
“All passports have been returned to the workers, irrespective of their preference,” it added.
Eversendai admitted that although there were shortcomings in workers’ accommodation, the matter was rectified by the middle of 2015 and it is now in compliance with the Workers’ Welfare Standards drawn up by Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC).
It also confirmed that it stopped the services of two labour supply companies, Seven Hills Trading and Blue Bay Contracting, months before the Amnesty report was published.
However, SC said in a statement on Thursday that although Eversendai had gone through significant rectification processes, it has been banned from subsequent World Cup projects until it shows “sustainable improvements”.
In an e-mail correspondence with The Star Online, a spokesman for Eversendai clarified that the company has not been banned from working on the Khalifa stadium project and work is still ongoing.
“The SC statement refers to future World Cup projects.
“We are confident that with our efforts that are in place, we will be able to demonstrate further sustainable improvements which will allow us to bid for future World Cup projects,” the spokesman said.
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1 April 2016
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amnestypressVerified account @amnestypress
BREAKING: report exposes abuse of #WorldCup workers on Khalifa stadium in Doha, Qatar. #FIFA https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/03/Abuse-of-World-Cup-workers-exposed/ … pic.twitter.com/esQwRDQSZk
Severe abuses including forced labour
The report is based on interviews with 132 migrant construction workers rebuilding Khalifa stadium, set to be the first stadium completed for the tournament and slated to host a World Cup semi-final in 2022. A further 99 migrants also interviewed were landscaping the green spaces in the surrounding Aspire Zone sports complex, where Bayern Munich, Everton and Paris Saint-Germain trained this winter.
Every single gardener and construction worker who spoke to Amnesty International reported abuse of one kind or another, including:
- squalid and cramped accommodation,
- paying large fees ($500 to $4,300) to recruiters in their home country to get a job in Qatar,
- being deceived as to the pay or type of work on offer (all but six of the men had salaries lower than promised when they arrived, sometimes by half),
- not being paid for several months, creating significant financial and emotional pressures on workers already burdened with heavy debts,
- employers not giving or renewing residence permits, leaving them at risk of detention and deportation as “absconded” workers,
- employers confiscating workers passports and not issuing exit permits so they could not leave the country,
- being threatened for complaining about their conditions.
Amnesty International uncovered evidence that the staff of one labour supply company used the threat of penalties to exact work from some migrants such as withholding pay, handing workers over to the police or stopping them from leaving Qatar. This amounts to forced labour under international law.
The workers, mostly from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, spoke to Amnesty International in Qatar between February and May 2015. When Amnesty International researchers returned to Qatar in February 2016, some of the workers had been moved to better accommodation and their passports returned by companies responding to Amnesty International findings, but other abuses had not been addressed.
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31 March 2016 | MYT 8:53 PM
Malaysian company in World Cup project cited for labour abuse
Ongoing construction work at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, Qatar. – Reuters
PETALING JAYA: A Malaysian company has been implicated in claims of abuse of migrant workers employed for a Qatar 2022 World Cup stadium project.
Amnesty International in its report The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game alleged that the workers were subjected to abuses like passport confiscation and dirty and crammed accommodations.
The organisation’s Gulf migrant rights researcher Mustafa Qadri said in a Skype press conference on Thursday that 24 of the 98 men who worked on the Khalifa Stadium Project were employed directly by the Malaysian company.
The remaining 74 were employed under two labour supply outfits contracted by the Malaysian company.
Mustafa said the abuses included workers having to pay large fees to recruiters in their home country, being deceived over the pay or type of work offered, unpaid salaries, employers not giving or renewing residence permits and workers being threatened for complaining about their conditions.
Mustafa also claimed that the Malaysian company had failed to investigate the abuses that were taking place on the project.
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weehingthong 