Now ye're talking - to a man living in Qatar

I live in Qatar, AMA wrote: »

Firstly, let me say that you are entitled to whatever beliefs you think are appropriate for you. I have no response, immediate or otherwise, to your beliefs. I will however discuss workers rights. You may not like or agree with what I say - but it is not propaganda, it is fact.

Secondly, you can certainly make the argument that any Westerner who moves to countries like Qatar or the UAE are complicit in the human rights atrocities committed by the local regime, but if you are to be fair you must also accept that anyone who buys a shirt made in the sweatshops of Bangladesh, or owns a smartphone with cobalt mined by children in DRC, or drinks lattes made from coffee harvested by wage slaves is equally complicit in those human rights atrocities. The world is enormously unfair and all of us white western posters on Boards.ie live lives that depend upon the exploitation of others.

We tend not to see the connections between out lifestyles and the exploitation of others because that exploitation takes place far away from us. Perhaps the difference in the Middle East is that the wealthy and the poor live side by side.

By the way my salary is not paid for by slave labour, my salary is paid from the emormous wealth of the State of Qatar, which in turn is based on the fact that they happen to share with Iran the largest natural gas field in the world.

So, turning then to the construction that is taking place in Qatar (including the Stadia - though that is just a small part of the total). I think that it can sometimes be difficult to comprehend the scale of the construction work that is taking place in Qatar. The Qataris are currently spending half a billion dollars a week on infrastructure. There is a new airport, harbour, Metro, motorways, 5G systems, public parks, sewage systems, water desalination plants, district cooling plants and dozens of new hotels. The infrastructure is far ahead of any European city that I can think of, all done in 20 years or so.

My work relates (at a tangent at least) to the insurance industry and so I am (to some degree) familiar with death rates, and statistics about the levels of accidents in the workplace etc.

Some media commentators (and I think the Guardian leads the charge here) frequently refer to the thousands of migrant workers who have dies since Qatar was awarded the World Cup. For example:

Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded
Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure over the past decade likely to be an underestimate
www.theguardian.com

Let's accept the number of 6,500 as a fact.

The population of Qatar is 2.9m of which only about 300,000 are Qatari. Only the Qataris can stay in Qatar indefinitely so the other 2.5m (including me) are migrant workers. But let us assume that we're talking about "blue-collar" workers only. Approx 69.7% of the migrant workers in Qatar are "blue-collar":
(PDF) Demography, Migration, and Labour Market in Qatar- UPDATED June 2017.

That gives us 1.8m manual workers - mostly from South East Asia - India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The article mentions that Filipinos and Kenyans are not included in its death tally. Most Filipinos speak English very well and are typically employed in the retail and services sectors - with some working as home help. I have never seen a Filipino doing unskilled manual labour. Most Kenyans also speak English and seem to be usually employed (male and female) as security guards - I have never seen a Kenyan doing unskilled manual labour. The Filipinos (approx 250,000) are therefore typically not in the "blue-collar" category. There are approx 30,000 Kenyans - I'm not sure how they are classified but that number does not materially impact on things.

So returning to the number of deaths - 6,500 over 10 years = 650 per annum. Let's also reduce the number of manual workers from 1.8m to 1.5m because numbers have probably increased over the past couple of years.

That gives us 650 deaths per year from a population of 1.5m males (aged typically from 25 - 55) from India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

That in turn gives us a death rate of 43 per 100,000. In the United States the death rate for men between the ages of 25 and 55 is 306.

Another factor that should lead to a higher number for Qatari manual labourers is that most are engaged in the construction sector, which in every country has a higher accident and death rate than for all employments aggregated.

On the other side of the scales we should remember that the American numbers count everyone in the United States of that age group whereas the Qatar migrants numbers relate only to men who were fit to work and who passed a health and blood test - for example, anyone with TB or AIDS is not allowed in.

Nevertheless, bringing all of this together, the real story here is not why is the death rate among Qatar migrant manual workers so high, but why is it so low?

There are a couple of factors:
• The first reason is that all of the workers who come to Qatar (including me) must pass a health check. So anyone with a serious underlying condition or illness cannot work in Qatar, and that is definitely skewing the numbers;
• Secondly employment, accommodation and nutrition standards for manual workers are fairly good in general, perhaps not what the average boards.ie reader might find acceptable, but the average low-skilled South Asian worker, coming from the slums of Dhaka or Lahore, is generally content.
• Thirdly labour rights and health and safety standards are probably the best in the region - and I know that may not be saying much - but the Qataris appear to be genuinely engaged in this issue. The International Labor Organisation has a permanent office in Qatar and works closely with the Government on issues affecting workers rights. It has to be said that it is a work in progress, but it is moving. ILO Project Office for the State of Qatar (Arab States)
• And finally there is world-class healthcare system in Qatar, it is available to every resident, and it is free. I am fully vaccinated against Covid. My teenage kids got their first shots last week, and they queued up at a public vaccination station along with workers from every nationality.

I will make a separate post about the wages paid to manual workers.