Theres a lot of mis reporting and one sided reporting of the Qatar World Cup 2022, would be interested in thoughts on another view of it published on a world wide football site yesterday.

Qatar 2022 – A View from Qatar

There’s been a new wave of Qatar slating recently based on the Sunday Times 2022 alleged World Cup bribery story last week. The allegations could be true, and whilst I’m not condoning it, I’d be surprised if any of the bidding countries were not trying to get favours in similar ways.

Though the alleged bribes reported were £5m this seems relatively low, that’s nothing in the global terms of the World Cup or Qatar, Qatari’s could spend that on a house for their cat, though wrong its hardly huge scale corruption. I’d hazard a guess other countries may have spent similar in seeking favours, if they weren’t they would be wasting their time with the Fifa we all know. It would be naive to think Qatar could be the first country to seek favours in order to get a world cup.

That article spawned a new wave of ’500 dead on Qatar World Cup sites so far’ lazy side stories added on to the bribery story. Obviously death of any sort is not a good thing but this is based on what started with a Yahoo news story that spread online and ended up with articles like this Guardian one and became common in news media worldwide in February.

The 500 was based on Indian government figures released at the end of 2013 stating that 237 Indians in Qatar died in 2012 and 241 in 2013, figures taken from the whole Indian population in Qatar, man women and child. 0% of those dead would have been involved in direct World Cup projects such as stadiums as they have not started, and there are very little women involved in construction (if any) and no kids involved.

There’s also a high fatality rate on the roads in Qatar, these will have also added to those figures. These figures the Indian embassy clarified a week after and a death rate per population that’s well below the average in India itself if anyone cared to investigate at the time. Given that enabling work (clearing the ground) on the first world cup stadium started in May this year that is a wild and dangerous headline. The kind of miss reporting that makes the Daily Record’s reporting of Celtic matters seem fair and balanced.

It particularly seems to be reports from the English media focusing on Qatar World Cup issues, you have to wonder what England who missed out on hosting the 2018 World Cup would stand to gain should 2022 be taken from Qatar…

I’m in no way trying to argue that all is good in Qatar and that there is no deaths that could be prevented or that Qatar deserves the World Cup after a 100% legit hosting bid but to bring the World Cup here can and should be a good thing.

First the bad…

The heat, its a no brainer its hot in Qatar but during the bidding process Qatar built a mock up stadium for a full size pitch to demonstrate to Fifa that a pitch and support could be air conditioned, that was accepted as part of the Qatar bid. It hit 50°C here last week (a week before World Cup time) weather that made just popping out to jump in a car very uncomfortable, and shirts a right off with sweat within seconds.

How they imagined people comfortably moving about, socializing etc during that kind of weather is anybody’s guess. Of the 22 places featured in the ‘Where to watch World Cup games’ in Doha TimeOut magazine this month only two bars are outdoors, those two won’t be popular. If it is confirmed its winter that is likely to be an issue also, it gets chilly in Qatar in the winter, got to hope all the new hotels are designed with heating…

There’s also been justified various reports about workers rights, health and welfare and that can only be a good thing. Qatar quite rightly gets embarrassed about these things and things are improving, with help from having the World Cup and the publicity that brings when people go looking for the now traditional pre World Cup scare stories.

The boom in preparing for the World Cup, upgrading the insufficient & dangerous road system, introducing a train/metro system and the 100s of hotels required plus the stadiums has brought multinational companies into Qatar.

Without the World Cup Qatar would likely to have built but maybe not to the rate where all these Western companies came in for the work, bringing their good practices, would anybody have cared about workers rights in Qatar during a building boom if there was no World Cup in Qatar?

There’s been a building boom in Abu Dhabi for at least the past five years and another starting again in Dubai under similar workers conditions, has there been any ‘workers rights’ articles written or investigations about there?

All the companies coming in with strict corporate organization, methods and ethics, companies who can’t be seen to not be looking after the safety and welfare of their workforce. There’s better compounds for labour than there was a few years ago and things are improving, due to the media glare the government are enforcing things to a greater level also.

This is on the bigger high profile projects, on those the laws and health and safety is very strict as it should be. However the whole ‘build a country/city for a world cup’ thing means there’s a huge number of smaller jobs needed around Doha and they have to be carried out by smaller local companies. Qatar is a country the about the size of Strathclyde, it has one city in Doha that’s about the size of Hamilton, there’s a lot of building to be done for a 32 team World Cup.

Small local companies no matter how bad they are get work, companies who seem to do what they want, there’s no obvious health and safety inspections or checks, or much safety gear provided by the looks of things, and the labour accommodation looks bad from what you can see from the outside or by media reports. But the World Cup boom and the bad publicity from reports can only see these companies being brought up to acceptable standards.

The other issue that’s been reported is that everybody who goes to Qatar to work is subject to their company approving when they leave to go home/holiday, or taking their passport. From site labourer to even Spanish Legend Raúl playing for Al Sadd SC would need to get an exit permit to go home.

Its not ideal but part of working here, guess it’s to stop people running away leaving debt like what happened in Dubai when they had a crash or more likely as a way of controlling people companies have invested in and brought over to give work, I’m not sure but everybody signs up for it. Whether labourers know about it before hand I couldn’t say.

I’d estimate there’s about 500,000-1,000,000 of the 2,000,000 people in Qatar doing work linked to construction/world cup, if it had went to a developed country with stadiums in place would as many jobs have been created? In these difficult times the creation of 500,000-1,000,000 jobs is not to be sniffed at, I know I’m thankful it gave me a job when there was/is none in Scotland.

A lot of those people are earning much more money than they could at home and are able to send back to give their families a better life. The common thought is that labourers can come, work for three years, go home and buy a good home outright, this will not be the case all the time but Id say all going well its why people come to Qatar and leave quite happy. I’ve spoke to people who have verified that this happens, a lot stay longer to earn more.

Where else would have been the ‘boom’ place in the world for so many to work if Qatar had not got the world cup or it was taken away? If the World Cup was taken away from Qatar does anybody think the hundreds of thousands of the workers people are concerned about will be taken care of and helped to get back home by companies who would also be losing a fortune due to that decision?

How Qatar got the World Cup is questionable by the looks of it but I can’t see how moving it can be done now or how it would help anyone (other than those with a chance of being the alternative host) no matter how shambolic the reasons it’s ended up in going to Qatar.

Via @graham1A on Twitter