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FIFA made a mistake in choosing Qatar

Brian Munoz new author
Roar Rookie
22nd April, 2016
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(Qatar 2022 via Getty Images)
Brian Munoz new author
Roar Rookie
22nd April, 2016
51
1205 Reads

Dear FIFA, it is time we talked about the 2022 World Cup.

The World Cup is very popular, to say the least. With 32 nations competing throughout a month-length of football, many stadiums are required.

Stadiums that Qatar, whom you have chosen to host the single-most influential sporting event in the world, does not have.

Qatar also lacks the workforce necessary to have these stadiums ready in time for the tournament. The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that Qatar will need to import around 1.8 million migrant workers to complete the construction needed for the World Cup.

The majority of those workers will be coming from Nepal, a country struggling to find any means of success, which lies 2,000 miles East of Qatar.

Nepal recently got out of a civil war and has been struggling ever since to stabilise their economy. With Qatar winning the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, Nepal saw this as the perfect opportunity to do so.

Qatar is seeking workers and Nepal is looking for work.

Nepal sending workers to Qatar seems to be the perfect combination. A situation that that could be greatly beneficial to both parties.

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Unfortunately, this is not the case. One of the current problems is the travel agencies. Nepalese men take all the money they have left and use it to pay the travel agencies for transportation and a work visa.

When these workers arrive in Qatar, they are told that all of their documentation is fake. A former reporter from Nepal, Seema Rajouria, wrote about an experience she had with a migrant worker in an article for The American Prospect.

She was at the airport at Qatar when she saw a man being stopped by security. They would not let him through because his paperwork was not legal. He had been cheated by the recruitment agency for 100,000 rupees.

This is just one example of how thousands of Nepalese men are being trapped into modern slavery. Qatar threatens these men, telling them that they can go to jail.

After informing the workers that they cannot go home anytime soon, Qatar basically has them in the palm of their hands.

Holding workers against their own will is illegal. Agencies are lying to the migrant workers and dropping them into this loophole that has no exit.

In 2014, ESPN did a special report in which they travelled to Qatar to try and reveal how migrant workers were being mistreated. In this documentary, Sharan Burrow, a general secretary for the International Trade Union Confederation, was interviewed.

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When asked about the migrant workers and why nothing is being done to change the current situation, she explains that, “[t]here is no fundamental right of collective voice. You can’t join a union. There’s no system of compliance. It’s self-auditing by companies.”

Since migrant workers are living in fear, they will not dare stand up to their superiors.

Ultimately, resulting in workers being pushed beyond their abilities in the dry summer heat of Qatar. Of course this is not the case for every migrant worker, but it is a very common issue that seems to keep expanding.

In an article published on The Diplomat, it is revealed that out of 150 Nepali migrant workers that were lucky enough to return home, over 90 per cent of them said they were lied and cheated to by recruitment agencies that did not respect their contracts.

The only option for FIFA, at this point, to fix the problem is to strip Qatar of their bid and elect a new country to host the 2022 World Cup.

As we all know, the other finalists to host the tournament that year were USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea. If Qatar were to be stripped of this honour for their immoral actions, it would be up to the officials to select a new location.

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Australia would be in a great position to host a FIFA World Cup for the first time.

Australia has proven over and over again to be a great fit for the biggest sporting events. They have hosted the Olympics along with the Rugby and Cricket World Cup a handful of times, so we can only assume they are capable of hosting the FIFA World Cup as well.

As opposed to Qatar, Australia has dozens of stadiums already built that could be the venues for the games.

The time to take action is now, give Australia the World Cup.

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