Rights groups say migrant workers are dying on Saudi job sites as kingdom prepares for World Cup

DUBAI – Scores of laborers from countries including India, Bangladesh and Nepal person faced preventable deaths from electrocution, roadworthy accidents, falling from heights, and much portion moving successful Saudi Arabia, according to a study Wednesday by the advocacy radical Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch and different rights group, FairSquare, released abstracted investigations Wednesday detailing preventable deaths of migrant workers from job-site accidents and work-related illnesses.

The reports impeach Saudi authorities of often misreporting specified deaths and failing to investigate, preventing families from receiving compensation from the kingdom that they are entitled to and knowing however their loved ones died.

As Saudi Arabia pushes up with hundreds of billions of dollars successful infrastructure and improvement initiatives — including the 2034 men’s shot World Cup and the futuristic metropolis Neom — rights groups pass of thousands much avoidable deaths successful the coming years.

In 1 case, Human Rights Watch said a Bangladeshi idiosyncratic was electrocuted connected the job. But his leader allegedly withheld the body, telling the household they would beryllium compensated lone if they agreed to a section burial.

Another household reported waiting astir 15 years earlier they were compensated by the Saudi government.

“It’s precise urgent that the Saudi authorities and FIFA enactment successful spot basal labour rights protections,” Minky Worden, Human Rights Watch’s manager of planetary initiatives, told The Associated Press, referring to soccer's satellite governing body.

Authorities successful Saudi Arabia did not respond to a petition for comment.

FairSquare, which looked into the deaths of 17 Nepali contractors successful Saudi Arabia implicit the past 18 months, warned successful its study that without accountability, “thousands of unexplained deaths” of low-paid overseas workers are apt to follow.

“In immoderate cases, you person families being pursued by wealth lenders for the loans that their (dead) hubby oregon begetter took retired successful bid to migrate to the Gulf,” said James Lynch, who co-directs FairSquare.

Saudi Arabia has agelong faced allegations of labour abuses and wage theft tied to its Vision 2030 project, a big-money effort to diversify its system beyond dependence connected oil.

FIFA shared with the AP a missive it sent Human Rights Watch past period defending the enactment of Saudi Arabia arsenic big of the 2034 World Cup.

The missive cited the Saudis' commitments to establishing “a workers’ payment system” and enhancing “country-wide labour protections including done a strengthened collaboration” with the United Nations’ International Labor Organization.

The kingdom is not the lone Gulf Arab authorities to beryllium accused of abusing migrant laborers successful the run-up to a World Cup. Rights groups also criticized Qatar, which hosted the contention successful 2022, saying they tallied thousands of unexplained idiosyncratic deaths.

But this clip has the imaginable to beryllium adjacent worse for overseas workers, Worden said, noting that the 2034 World Cup has plans to necessitate much stadiums and infrastructure with much teams competing.

Qatar established an oversight committee called the Supreme Committee, which monitored FIFA operation sites and took reports of unsafe enactment conditions.

“There’s nary specified committee similar that successful Saudi Arabia,” Worden said, adding, “In the end, Qatar did person factual policies similar beingness security and vigor protection. Those aren’t successful spot now” successful Saudi Arabia.

The details of the investigations from Human Rights Watch and FairSquare travel a time aft FIFA President Gianni Infantino joined U.S. President Donald Trump connected his authoritative sojourn to Saudi Arabia, wherever Trump met with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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