Headlines
Qatar denies deaths of Indian, Nepali workers
Doha, June 3
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 factâ€.
The spokesperson wants the Post to take down the article.