Sweated Labour in Qatar

Migrant labourers are being worked to death in searing temperatures in Qatar, with hundreds estimated to be dying from heat stress every year, a Guardian investigation revealed.

This summer, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers toiled in temperatures of up to 45C for up to 10 hours a day as Qatar’s construction boom hit its peak ahead of the Fifa World Cup 2022. Qatar’s construction boom ahead of the 2022 Fifa World Cup has seen the country’s migrant worker population rise to 1.9m, many of these young men from Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan who travel to the country to build the stadiums, roads and hotels that will service the tournament.

Qatari authorities, in line with other countries across the Gulf, have said they are protecting workers from heat-related injuries through a work ban that prohibits manual labour in unshaded outdoor areas between 11.30 and 3pm from mid-June to August. Yet a Guardian analysis showed that the working ban does not keep workers safe. In the hours outside the ban, anyone working outdoors is still being exposed to potentially fatal levels of heat stress between June and September, which cardiologists say is leading to high numbers of fatalities every year. Its analysis also found dangerous levels of heat exposure continues into the cooler months.  workers remain at risk of serious harm from heat stress between 9am and 12 noon.

Working in high temperatures puts a huge strain on the human cardiovascular system, with extreme heat stress leading to fatal heart attacks and other cardiovascular fatalities, recent research has shown. Every year hundreds of workers – many young men between 25 and 35 years old – die while working in Qatar. The majority of these deaths are attributed to cardiovascular causes or “natural death” by the Qatari authorities. 

Yet recent research published in the Cardiology Journal by a group of leading climatologists and cardiologists concluded that the deaths were likely to be caused by heatstroke, exploring the correlation between the deaths of 1,300 Nepali workers between 2009 and 2017, and rising temperatures. The research found that in the cooler months about 22% of deaths year-on-year were attributed to heart attacks, cardiac arrest or other cardio-related causes by the Qatari authorities. In the summer months this spiked to 58%.

“From our research it was clear that workers are being recruited in their home countries partly on the basis of their health and are arriving in the Gulf fit for work,” said Dr Dan Atar, professor of cardiology and head of research at Oslo University Hospital, who co-authored the research into cardiovascular deaths and heat stress. “Young men have a very low incidence of heart attacks yet hundreds of them are dying every year in Qatar attributed to cardiovascular causes. The clear conclusion that I draw from this as a cardiologist is that these deaths are caused by deadly heatstroke. Their bodies cannot take the heat stress they are being exposed to.” Atar said that according to the research, as many as 200 of the 571 young men who died of cardiovascular causes between 2009 and 2017 could have been saved if effective heat protection measures had been implemented as part of occupational health and safety programmes. Fatalities from heat stress can be avoided if workers are able to access immediate medical assistance, yet some workers interviewed in Qatar said their employer refused to issue them Qatari health cards or allow them access to medical facilities if they fell ill.

Nick McGeehan, director of Fair/Square Projects, which has conducted research on heat stress and migrant worker rights, said, “For years human rights campaigners have been raising the impact of heat stress on worker fatalities and yet the deaths continue.”

Migrant workers said they suffered from a range of heat-related conditions, including skin allergies, headaches, altered vision, light-headedness and difficulty breathing.

“As global temperatures rise because of the climate crisis, the health risk posed by heat stress will have devastating health consequences for millions, yet is still not being seen as the emergency that it is,” says Professor Tord Kjellstrom, a consultant on environmental and occupational health for the United Nations and co-author of the Cardiology Journal report. “This has to change.”