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Middle East News on Apr. 5, 2020
Monday, April 06, 2020
VietPress USA Source: www.reddit.com
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RIYADH: Qatar on Wednesday said 238 new coronavirus cases had been discovered among expatriates quarantined in a residential compound.
The huge jump in cases - from 24 to 262 - was announced in a health ministry statement that failed to clarify if the infected are migrant workers living in labor camps.
Qatar has faced international condemnation for its treatment of migrant workers, particularly those employed on major construction projects linked to the World Cup 2022.
Laborers recruited from poor countries like Pakistan and Nepal often live packed into camps in the desert from where they are bussed to the construction sites.
Among the many reports documenting the abuses, Amnesty International found in 2016 that workers at one of the flagship stadiums were forced to live in squalid accommodation, pay huge recruitment fees and had wages withheld and passports confiscated.
The huge jump in cases - from 24 to 262 - was announced in a health ministry statement that failed to clarify if the infected are migrant workers living in labor camps.
Qatar has faced international condemnation for its treatment of migrant workers, particularly those employed on major construction projects linked to the World Cup 2022.
Laborers recruited from poor countries like Pakistan and Nepal often live packed into camps in the desert from where they are bussed to the construction sites.
Among the many reports documenting the abuses, Amnesty International found in 2016 that workers at one of the flagship stadiums were forced to live in squalid accommodation, pay huge recruitment fees and had wages withheld and passports confiscated.
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The workers are some of the thousands slaving away on the FIFA World Cup infrastructure projects.
Qatar “labor camps” are being locked down by authorities and workers with coronavirus concentrated inside them are in conditions that deny them basic human rights. According to a report at the Guardian, hundreds of construction workers now have the virus amid the global pandemic and Qatar’s policies of concentrating the people together in “squalid,over-crowded camps” enables the virus to “spread rapidly.”
The workers are some of the thousands slaving away on the FIFA World Cup infrastructure projects. “Inside the quarantined camps, workers describe an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty,” the report notes. Workers are being put on unpaid leave and it is getting worse by the day. Labor camps where the coronavirus sufferers are concentrated are given numbers within Qatar’s expansive gulag of workers camps. “Workers from camp 1 to camp 32 are in lockdown,” one man from Bangladesh said to the Guardian.
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