World Cup Controversy:

By Hadley D.

While the world enjoys the FIFA World Cup, migrant workers paid the price. These workers dealt with bad working and living conditions with building the 7 new stadiums. Some were even not paid as promised, according to CNN. For their meals, they sometimes got rotten food and ice instead of water, according to PBS NewsHour. World Cup Qatar Chief Hassan Al-Thawadi said, ”between 400 and 500 migrant workers have died as a result of work in the building of the 2022 World Cup." (CNN) Although on TV, the stadiums look beautiful, it has caused many hardships and even deaths to some migrant workers.

Migrant workers were promised a wage of $9,000, and they only got about ⅓ of  their promised wages, according to PBS NewsHour. The migrant workers had to get loans so they could get to Qatar to build the stadiums. Since they did not get their full wages, they could not repay their loans. These workers came to Qatar, so they could send money back to their families. Since they did not get their full wages, they can't send money back to their families or return home. What’s even worse than workers not being paid are the workers' abuses that were hidden from FIFA. One example of abuse was when construction officials pulled the fire alarm trick.

Construction officials purposely turned on the fire alarm so that migrant workers would go to the assembly spot. At that point, officials turned the fire alarms off, and loaded the migrant workers into buses to be taken away from the stadium. The company told FIFA that the workers went to lunch while FIFA inspected the working conditions. The intent of getting the migrant workers away from the stadium was to hide the abuses from FIFA, according to Rolling Stone Magazine.

A migrant worker named Kamal was standing outside a shop when he was arrested and put in a vehicle. For the next week Kamal was in jail, he thinks he was arrested because he had a second job. Having more than one job is illegal under Qatar's  2004 labor law and allows authorities to cancel a worker's work permit, according to CNN News. 

Qatari construction officials have another side of the story.  For example, when it came to serving workers ice instead of just water, they say it was because of the heat. In terms of treatment of workers, Qatari government official Hassan Al-Thawadi said, "We launched worker welfare forms within the Supreme Committee for the construction companies that were involved. These were set up to ensure that workers had a safe environment where they could raise their concerns and grievances without any fears of reprisal.”

Because migrant workers have been taken advantage of, worker abuses have been hidden from FIFA, and workers wages were not paid, real people suffered.