December 2022 International Blog - Qatari Lessons for Everyone

Goaaaaal!

Every four years, football fever takes over the World – even in the Mirkowski household. Is it my imagination though, or is the enthusiasm a little muted this year? I keep hearing a consistent word in connection with the 2022 World Cup, which is: “controversial”. From human rights to migrant workers, from soaring summer temperatures to a lack of football culture. Whiffs of bribery and corruption never seem to go away, and many fans have missed that essential staple which seems to lubricate football matches – alcohol.

Qatar health and safety laws

Qatar was a British Protectorate until 1971 (three years before the launch of our Health & Safety at Work Act), and their main labour regulation is Law No (14) of the Year 2004. Clearly, quite new law by European standards, but then the country only has a population of 3 million, with little industrial heritage outside of oil & gas. You have to trawl through nearly one hundred articles (sections) of the Law before reaching Part Ten, which addresses safety, vocational health and social care. Part Ten makes all the usual noises about employers taking precautionary measures, providing welfare facilities, first aid, medical check-ups, reporting accidents, worker compensation, consultation, etc. Workers are required to follow instructions, and wear PPE. Clearly, the Qataris had looked at what other countries were doing, and drafted their own health & safety laws accordingly. The Labour Department is in charge of a quaintly-named “Work Inspection Organ”, employing around 270 Work Inspectors (58 of them women) in 2019.

Are the inspectors effective?

Qatar has built seven stadia for the World Cup finals as well as a new airport, metro system, highways and about 100 new hotels. An entire city was constructed around the Lusail Iconic Stadium hosting the final match. Qatar's government says that 30,000 foreign labourers were hired to build the stadia alone, most coming from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and the Philippines. The saying is that you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs? The Qatari government said its accident records showed that between 2014 and 2020, there were 37 deaths among labourers at World Cup stadia construction sites, only three of which were "work-related". The International Labour Organisation (ILO) claims this to be an underestimate. Qatar doesn't count deaths from heart attacks and respiratory failure as work-related - even though these are common symptoms of heatstroke, brought on from doing heavy labour in very high temperatures. The most common cause is claimed to be: “natural deaths”. The Guardian goes further, claiming that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka died in Qatar between 2010 and 2020, according to those countries’ own figures. These figures do not include deaths from other countries which send large numbers of workers to Qatar, such as the Philippines and Kenya.

Pot calling the kettle black?

Before we put on our smug, knowing, faces, let’s look at the record of the first country to introduce health & safety laws. Arinite’s March 2022 Blog saw how the UK’s first health & safety inspectors were clergymen and justices of the peace. Eventually, the first factory inspectors were appointed in 1833 – but there were only four of them. Maybe the Qataris could have learned the lessons of history, enlisted some international expertise, and avoided repeating the same mistakes that other countries made during their growth phases? The construction of the 2012 London Olympics led to the proud boast of zero fatalities for the first time in Olympic history, with a reported injury rate of 0.17 per 100,000 person-hours - far below the 0.55 building industry average in the U.K. With $200billion said to have been spent on the 2022 World Cup, perhaps a little more could have been spent on health & safety advice and implementation?

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