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At least 6,500 migrant worker deaths in Qatar since winning the World Cup bid

103 points by derriz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
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boeingUH60 5y ago
This number may mean nothing without context. At least 6,500 migrant workers have died, but how many exactly occurred due to the construction of new buildings for the World Cup? The title of this post isn’t really honest. It says “at least 6,500 deaths constructing stadia for the World Cup” but the Guardian article is titled “6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded”. And yes, I’m aware of migrant abuse in Qatar and other relatively wealthy Middle Eastern countries…just want to set the facts straight
- derriz 5y ago
  That's a fair call regarding the title I used. I didn't intend it to be misleading - I was being sloppy as I found the number absolutely shocking. Perhaps something like "At least 6,500 construction deaths in Qatar since winning the bid to host the World Cup" would be fairer.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    These are not construction deaths. The article does not claim that these were construction deaths. That's something you invented in your head. This number represents all-cause mortality.
- rand49an 5y ago
  In comparable projects, the London Olympics in 2012 had 0 construction deaths associated and in more recent years, even the highest recorded count was 74 in Sochi, Russia.
  - Spare_account 5y ago
    You're perpetuating the mistake in the title. As I understand the GP, the point is that during the construction of the any sporting facilities, some workers will have died but it won't have been directly related to the work they did. In Qatar, that number is >6500. In the UK, we don't know the number.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      Yes we do. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mo... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26595089/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26595089/ Same statistics are available in the UK, although immigrant-specific numbers aren’t updated on a weekly basis.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Yeah, I was going to say; any construction deaths are frontpage news here. 6500 for a country the size of a shoe is insane, directly related to the the worldcup or not.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      These aren't construction deaths. This number includes all causes of death for all 2+ million immigrant workers in Qatar.
  - adwww 5y ago
    Even 74 in Sochi sounds mind blowing. I can't imagine that many people dying on an engineering project anywhere else in Europe, unless perhaps there was a major incident like a tunnel collapse. But that would be headline news around the world.
    - orra 5y ago
      It was rightly newsworthy, and investigated, that one person died during the construction of the Queensferry Crossing.
- ejb999 5y ago
  I agree - there is probably a story here, but the writer didn't do a very good job connecting the dots, correlation is not causation, lazy journalism at its worst. How is this for a headline? "5,333 US workers died in the 12 months following Qatar withdrawing from OPEC" or "5,333 US Workers died in the 12 months following Austria legalizing same sex marriage" source: https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/2019/january https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/2019/january https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats
- guillermin 5y ago
  I do believe that fact-checking and identifying clickbait is important, but in this case I think you are nitpicking with no cause and adding no substance to the discussion. The article mentions a sum of 6,751 deaths not including several countries (Philippines and Kenya), so "at least 6,500" is correct. The article also says "While death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects", so the "constructing stadia for the World Cup", although a bit loosely, is also true. I don't get what you were trying to open our eyes to with your comment. Even if only 1,000 workers were confirmed to be deaths directly related to building stadia it is just as horrible and needs to be known.
  - ejb999 5y ago
    "Even if only 1,000 workers were confirmed to be deaths"... thats the problem, you are just guessing, yes 1000 deaths on a construction project would be an awful lot - but the article makes zero claims about how many people died from the heat, from heart diseases from covid or even from the covid vaccine, or from the actual project - which is the implied cause, without citing any data - just listing a high number of deaths that happened in a population of people, after some other event occurred, means less than nothing. Thats not 'nitpicking', that pointing out glaring laziness on the part of the author to imply a cause and effect, and provide ZERO data to back it up.
naoqj 5y ago
- biofox 5y ago
  But stadia is the plural of stadium. I don't understand.
  - naoqj 5y ago
    You understand, actually.
    - Lio 5y ago
      Would you mind explaining your point a little for those of us being a bit slow today? What word would you use other than stadia to describe the plural of stadium? Or were you making some other point about talking about stadia in general?
      - boeingUH60 5y ago
        I think he's referring to Google Stadia [1]...it isn't much common to use Stadia as plural of stadium, even if it's correct. 1 - https://stadia.google.com/ https://stadia.google.com/
        Lio 5y ago
        Not sure what you mean by not common but it’s the only way we refer to the plural of stadium in the UK and other Commonwealth countries. I hadn’t even considered the Google product.
      - naoqj 5y ago
        Stadiums, as the article does.
traceroute66 5y ago
I am having difficulty correlating the click-baity title with the content of the article. For example, the article says "death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects" .... i.e. the article is making an inference ("it is likely") from data that does not exist. The article also goes on to say "There have been 37 deaths among workers directly linked to construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “non-work related” by the event’s organising committee." .... 37 is quite a long way off 6,500. I'm not necessarily seeking to defend Qatar, I've got no dogs in that fight, so I will stay neutral on that particular commentary. I'm just saying if you're going to be posting headlines like that, then there should really be some substance to it ... at the moment the linked article raises more questions than it answers.
- eecc 5y ago
  Wow, so all I have to do to let your fall for plausible-deniability is to just omit to register employment contracts and incidents? What an easy mark
- treyfitty 5y ago
  The controversy surrounding the ranges in numbers has been a topic for many years. To your point, the 37 number has been quoted as a rebuttal to the 6,500 number, but from my memory, the 37 number has its own set of weak assumptions, and controversy on measurement. I forget what those are, but you’re right- it’s unclear and this article adds to confusion/controversy rather than substantiates the 6,500 figure.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
mellosouls 5y ago
Actual title: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded Not "constructing stadia in Qatar for the world cup".
- dwighttk 5y ago
  Also (2021)
dataengineer56 5y ago
I thought this had been debunked and that actually the death rate included all deaths of migrants for any reason (cancer, accidents at home etc). I also thought that the death rate was lower than if these migrants had stayed in their own countries. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33019838 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33019838 is from 2015 but I thought I read something more recently.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  That’s like saying because people die often when they’re gone anyway, it’s okay if they die in the army at the same rate. It’s not the same.
  - dataengineer56 5y ago
    Everyone has to die. If they're dying at a lower rate in Qatar than their own country then how is that bad for Qatar?
    - lvl102 5y ago
      Do you really not see the difference? Based on your name, you clearly deal with data.
      - ramraj07 5y ago
        Data engineers know as much about data as real estate agents know about land.
    - crispyambulance 5y ago
      It just goes to show how little agency these workers have. One dumb story drawing outsized conclusions with bad data has people claiming Qatar is A-OK because the story is wrong. It may very well be that workers have a lower death rate in Qatar than in the medieval-level conditions of their home countries, but that doesn't excuse indentured servitude (actual modern slavery) which is what many face in Qatar and UAE. In the 1700's British slave traders brought Africans to the new world where most lived longer lives than they would have in their homelands. How does that reflect badly on British slave traders? </sarcasm>
FDSGSG 5y ago
These aren't construction deaths. Nor are they deaths related to the world cup. This number includes every migrant worker death in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded, there are over 2 million migrant workers in Qatar.
darkteflon 5y ago
When I lived in Abu Dhabi, I’d often see migrant workers - mainly from Kerala - out tending to the roadside plants in ~50 celsius temperatures in the summer. That was pretty representative of their treatment on the whole. Disgusting disregard for human life.
- rosndo 5y ago
  Do you think those people (and their families!) would have been better off if they stayed in Kerala? I’ve lived in the UAE too, and actually had conversations with many of these people. Many of them missed home, but it was all worth it for the relatively massive amounts of money they were earning. I think comments like yours are often ignorant of just how rough lives these people would have back home.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    If things were so clearly good, they wouldn't have their passports confiscated.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      If your employer confiscates your passport in the UAE, you just have to call 80060 and you’ll have the police bringing it back to you real soon. It is illegal for employers to do that, and enforcement is swift. All low-skill immigrant workers have to watch an hour long video explaining this (and all their other rights) in order to get their visa. —— Edit: Sorry, I can’t reply to you below darkteflon. I’ve seen the worker camps, but I’ve also extensively toured India and it’s neighboring countries. UAE and Qatar only look bad when compared with the West, but in reality they’re doing more to help these people than the Western countries which would never even grant them visas. > This is not a Rule of Law jurisdiction Sure, I agree. I have a plenty of bad things to say about these countries, but I think that their treatment of migrant workers is a particularly weak criticism. I’ll accept the criticism as valid the day Western countries start offering visas to similar categories of migrant workers.
      - 5y ago
derriz 5y ago
Apologies for the original click-baity/misleading title. I've changed it.
- rosndo 5y ago
  The title is still a straight up lie.
- boeingUH60 5y ago
  Your current title still implies construction deaths, which isn't true. Better to change it from "At least 6,500 construction deaths in Qatar since winning the World Cup bid" to "At least 6,500 migrant worker deaths in Qatar since winning the World Cup bid".
derriz 5y ago
Ok - sorry I've really screwed this submission up. I think the points that many have made in the comments about the clickbaitiness and misleading nature/incorrect interpretation of the title I used are completely valid. I had found it pretty shocking, given say the 37 average annual deaths in construction in a country like the UK which has over 20 times the population, so rushed to create a HN submission.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  Apparently, the UK has roughly the same amount of construction workers as the number of migrants in Qatar (around 2M). (https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/constructionindustry/articles/constructionstatistics/2020#:~:text=Sourced%20from%20IDBR%20estimates%2C%20construction,2019%2C%20totalling%201.4%20million%20workers https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/construction....)
  - Spare_account 5y ago
    How many UK construction workers died in the last 10 years? Can we get that data from somewhere?
OscarCunningham 5y ago
> More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal. I tried to work out the context for this figure, but the answer I found made no sense. It's frustrating that I'm having to figure this out myself rather than The Guardian being responsible. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar there are approximately 2.3 million migrant workers in Qatar. For 6500 of them to die over 10 years is a death rate of 6500/(10*2300000) = 0.000283. The typical such worker is perhaps an Indian immigrant in the 35-39 age bracket. According to https://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.60740?lang=en https://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.60740?lang=en such people would have a death rate of 0.00319, if they remained in India. So have I made a mistake, or is this article really about the fact that being a near-slave in Qatar cuts your risk of death by 91%?
- daureg 5y ago
  The same table says males in UK had a death rate of 0.00106 between 35 and 39 years of age in 2019 (5 times higher than workers in Qatar) so I don't know what's the mistake but it seems to me we can't compare those 2 numbers like that.
  - doldols 5y ago
    Of course not, these death rates are based on numbers reported by embassies. It’s unsurprising that they aren’t very accurate. But if we were to believe these numbers, the only possible conclusions would reflect very well on Qatar.
    - OscarCunningham 5y ago
      Right, the numbers are so far in Qatar's favour that we know they must be wrong. Which makes it even more ridiculous that The Guardian has managed to fabricate a negative article from them.
- rosndo 5y ago
  > So have I made a mistake, or is this article really about the fact that being a near-slave in Qatar cuts your risk of death by 91%? No, you haven’t made a mistake. The issue here is that the average HN user has absolutely no idea how rough conditions these migrant workers tend to come from.
someotherperson 5y ago
I've flagged this. People die every single day, it's the inevitable tragedy that comes with being alive. The 6,500 weren't people that died on the job site, it includes all-cause mortality from a total of 2,000,000 people according to the article. Qatar's treatment of everyone is horrible -- it's not a great country. It's suspicious that they received the ability to host the World Cup. But the available data doesn't back the claims just yet. It deserves more attention, but that's something that should be up to the government's of the nationals dying to poke at. An article that takes a single data point and extrapolates it emotionally isn't the type of journalism we should be aiming for -- we've had enough of that over the last few decades.
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Markoff 5y ago
Headline like this is reason why I have every day less and less trust in MSM and especially ignore leftist The Guardian.
GoodJokes 5y ago
guru4consulting 5y ago
When working outdoors in middle-eastern countries and the temperature goes above certain range (like 45C/110F range), sirens/alarms are raised to halt the work and give a cool-off period for the workers. My friend worked as an instrumentation engineer in the region and he mentioned about a wide-spread malpractice of recalibrating these monitoring tools to increase the temperature threshold by few degrees. So, the sirens won't sound at 110F but instead will sound only at 115F. And there are many other instances to prove the horrible working conditions and lack of safer work environment. Qatar is relatively less worse compared to the other nearby countries though.

103 points by derriz 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

This number may mean nothing without context. At least 6,500 migrant workers have died, but how many exactly occurred due to the construction of new buildings for the World Cup? The title of this post isn’t really honest. It says “at least 6,500 deaths constructing stadia for the World Cup” but the Guardian article is titled “6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded”. And yes, I’m aware of migrant abuse in Qatar and other relatively wealthy Middle Eastern countries…just want to set the facts straight

derriz 5y ago
That's a fair call regarding the title I used. I didn't intend it to be misleading - I was being sloppy as I found the number absolutely shocking. Perhaps something like "At least 6,500 construction deaths in Qatar since winning the bid to host the World Cup" would be fairer.
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  These are not construction deaths. The article does not claim that these were construction deaths. That's something you invented in your head. This number represents all-cause mortality.
rand49an 5y ago
In comparable projects, the London Olympics in 2012 had 0 construction deaths associated and in more recent years, even the highest recorded count was 74 in Sochi, Russia.
- Spare_account 5y ago
  You're perpetuating the mistake in the title. As I understand the GP, the point is that during the construction of the any sporting facilities, some workers will have died but it won't have been directly related to the work they did. In Qatar, that number is >6500. In the UK, we don't know the number.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    Yes we do. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mo... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26595089/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26595089/ Same statistics are available in the UK, although immigrant-specific numbers aren’t updated on a weekly basis.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Yeah, I was going to say; any construction deaths are frontpage news here. 6500 for a country the size of a shoe is insane, directly related to the the worldcup or not.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    These aren't construction deaths. This number includes all causes of death for all 2+ million immigrant workers in Qatar.
- adwww 5y ago
  Even 74 in Sochi sounds mind blowing. I can't imagine that many people dying on an engineering project anywhere else in Europe, unless perhaps there was a major incident like a tunnel collapse. But that would be headline news around the world.
  - orra 5y ago
    It was rightly newsworthy, and investigated, that one person died during the construction of the Queensferry Crossing.
ejb999 5y ago
I agree - there is probably a story here, but the writer didn't do a very good job connecting the dots, correlation is not causation, lazy journalism at its worst. How is this for a headline? "5,333 US workers died in the 12 months following Qatar withdrawing from OPEC" or "5,333 US Workers died in the 12 months following Austria legalizing same sex marriage" source: https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/2019/january https://www.onthisday.com/events/date/2019/january https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats
guillermin 5y ago
I do believe that fact-checking and identifying clickbait is important, but in this case I think you are nitpicking with no cause and adding no substance to the discussion. The article mentions a sum of 6,751 deaths not including several countries (Philippines and Kenya), so "at least 6,500" is correct. The article also says "While death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects", so the "constructing stadia for the World Cup", although a bit loosely, is also true. I don't get what you were trying to open our eyes to with your comment. Even if only 1,000 workers were confirmed to be deaths directly related to building stadia it is just as horrible and needs to be known.
- ejb999 5y ago
  "Even if only 1,000 workers were confirmed to be deaths"... thats the problem, you are just guessing, yes 1000 deaths on a construction project would be an awful lot - but the article makes zero claims about how many people died from the heat, from heart diseases from covid or even from the covid vaccine, or from the actual project - which is the implied cause, without citing any data - just listing a high number of deaths that happened in a population of people, after some other event occurred, means less than nothing. Thats not 'nitpicking', that pointing out glaring laziness on the part of the author to imply a cause and effect, and provide ZERO data to back it up.

naoqj 5y ago

biofox 5y ago
But stadia is the plural of stadium. I don't understand.
- naoqj 5y ago
  You understand, actually.
  - Lio 5y ago
    Would you mind explaining your point a little for those of us being a bit slow today? What word would you use other than stadia to describe the plural of stadium? Or were you making some other point about talking about stadia in general?
    - boeingUH60 5y ago
      I think he's referring to Google Stadia [1]...it isn't much common to use Stadia as plural of stadium, even if it's correct. 1 - https://stadia.google.com/ https://stadia.google.com/
      - Lio 5y ago
        Not sure what you mean by not common but it’s the only way we refer to the plural of stadium in the UK and other Commonwealth countries. I hadn’t even considered the Google product.
    - naoqj 5y ago
      Stadiums, as the article does.

traceroute66 5y ago

I am having difficulty correlating the click-baity title with the content of the article. For example, the article says "death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects" .... i.e. the article is making an inference ("it is likely") from data that does not exist. The article also goes on to say "There have been 37 deaths among workers directly linked to construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “non-work related” by the event’s organising committee." .... 37 is quite a long way off 6,500. I'm not necessarily seeking to defend Qatar, I've got no dogs in that fight, so I will stay neutral on that particular commentary. I'm just saying if you're going to be posting headlines like that, then there should really be some substance to it ... at the moment the linked article raises more questions than it answers.

eecc 5y ago
Wow, so all I have to do to let your fall for plausible-deniability is to just omit to register employment contracts and incidents? What an easy mark
treyfitty 5y ago
The controversy surrounding the ranges in numbers has been a topic for many years. To your point, the 37 number has been quoted as a rebuttal to the 6,500 number, but from my memory, the 37 number has its own set of weak assumptions, and controversy on measurement. I forget what those are, but you’re right- it’s unclear and this article adds to confusion/controversy rather than substantiates the 6,500 figure.
GoodJokes 5y ago

mellosouls 5y ago

Actual title: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded Not "constructing stadia in Qatar for the world cup".

dwighttk 5y ago
Also (2021)

dataengineer56 5y ago

I thought this had been debunked and that actually the death rate included all deaths of migrants for any reason (cancer, accidents at home etc). I also thought that the death rate was lower than if these migrants had stayed in their own countries. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33019838 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33019838 is from 2015 but I thought I read something more recently.

ramraj07 5y ago
That’s like saying because people die often when they’re gone anyway, it’s okay if they die in the army at the same rate. It’s not the same.
- dataengineer56 5y ago
  Everyone has to die. If they're dying at a lower rate in Qatar than their own country then how is that bad for Qatar?
  - lvl102 5y ago
    Do you really not see the difference? Based on your name, you clearly deal with data.
    - ramraj07 5y ago
      Data engineers know as much about data as real estate agents know about land.
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    It just goes to show how little agency these workers have. One dumb story drawing outsized conclusions with bad data has people claiming Qatar is A-OK because the story is wrong. It may very well be that workers have a lower death rate in Qatar than in the medieval-level conditions of their home countries, but that doesn't excuse indentured servitude (actual modern slavery) which is what many face in Qatar and UAE. In the 1700's British slave traders brought Africans to the new world where most lived longer lives than they would have in their homelands. How does that reflect badly on British slave traders? </sarcasm>

FDSGSG 5y ago

These aren't construction deaths. Nor are they deaths related to the world cup. This number includes every migrant worker death in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded, there are over 2 million migrant workers in Qatar.

darkteflon 5y ago

When I lived in Abu Dhabi, I’d often see migrant workers - mainly from Kerala - out tending to the roadside plants in ~50 celsius temperatures in the summer. That was pretty representative of their treatment on the whole. Disgusting disregard for human life.

rosndo 5y ago
Do you think those people (and their families!) would have been better off if they stayed in Kerala? I’ve lived in the UAE too, and actually had conversations with many of these people. Many of them missed home, but it was all worth it for the relatively massive amounts of money they were earning. I think comments like yours are often ignorant of just how rough lives these people would have back home.
- rglullis 5y ago
  If things were so clearly good, they wouldn't have their passports confiscated.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    If your employer confiscates your passport in the UAE, you just have to call 80060 and you’ll have the police bringing it back to you real soon. It is illegal for employers to do that, and enforcement is swift. All low-skill immigrant workers have to watch an hour long video explaining this (and all their other rights) in order to get their visa. —— Edit: Sorry, I can’t reply to you below darkteflon. I’ve seen the worker camps, but I’ve also extensively toured India and it’s neighboring countries. UAE and Qatar only look bad when compared with the West, but in reality they’re doing more to help these people than the Western countries which would never even grant them visas. > This is not a Rule of Law jurisdiction Sure, I agree. I have a plenty of bad things to say about these countries, but I think that their treatment of migrant workers is a particularly weak criticism. I’ll accept the criticism as valid the day Western countries start offering visas to similar categories of migrant workers.
    - 5y ago

derriz 5y ago

Apologies for the original click-baity/misleading title. I've changed it.

rosndo 5y ago
The title is still a straight up lie.
boeingUH60 5y ago
Your current title still implies construction deaths, which isn't true. Better to change it from "At least 6,500 construction deaths in Qatar since winning the World Cup bid" to "At least 6,500 migrant worker deaths in Qatar since winning the World Cup bid".

derriz 5y ago

Ok - sorry I've really screwed this submission up. I think the points that many have made in the comments about the clickbaitiness and misleading nature/incorrect interpretation of the title I used are completely valid. I had found it pretty shocking, given say the 37 average annual deaths in construction in a country like the UK which has over 20 times the population, so rushed to create a HN submission.

Leherenn 5y ago
Apparently, the UK has roughly the same amount of construction workers as the number of migrants in Qatar (around 2M). (https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/constructionindustry/articles/constructionstatistics/2020#:~:text=Sourced%20from%20IDBR%20estimates%2C%20construction,2019%2C%20totalling%201.4%20million%20workers https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/construction....)
- Spare_account 5y ago
  How many UK construction workers died in the last 10 years? Can we get that data from somewhere?

OscarCunningham 5y ago

> More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal. I tried to work out the context for this figure, but the answer I found made no sense. It's frustrating that I'm having to figure this out myself rather than The Guardian being responsible. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Qatar there are approximately 2.3 million migrant workers in Qatar. For 6500 of them to die over 10 years is a death rate of 6500/(10*2300000) = 0.000283. The typical such worker is perhaps an Indian immigrant in the 35-39 age bracket. According to https://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.60740?lang=en https://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.60740?lang=en such people would have a death rate of 0.00319, if they remained in India. So have I made a mistake, or is this article really about the fact that being a near-slave in Qatar cuts your risk of death by 91%?

daureg 5y ago
The same table says males in UK had a death rate of 0.00106 between 35 and 39 years of age in 2019 (5 times higher than workers in Qatar) so I don't know what's the mistake but it seems to me we can't compare those 2 numbers like that.
- doldols 5y ago
  Of course not, these death rates are based on numbers reported by embassies. It’s unsurprising that they aren’t very accurate. But if we were to believe these numbers, the only possible conclusions would reflect very well on Qatar.
  - OscarCunningham 5y ago
    Right, the numbers are so far in Qatar's favour that we know they must be wrong. Which makes it even more ridiculous that The Guardian has managed to fabricate a negative article from them.
rosndo 5y ago
> So have I made a mistake, or is this article really about the fact that being a near-slave in Qatar cuts your risk of death by 91%? No, you haven’t made a mistake. The issue here is that the average HN user has absolutely no idea how rough conditions these migrant workers tend to come from.

someotherperson 5y ago

I've flagged this. People die every single day, it's the inevitable tragedy that comes with being alive. The 6,500 weren't people that died on the job site, it includes all-cause mortality from a total of 2,000,000 people according to the article. Qatar's treatment of everyone is horrible -- it's not a great country. It's suspicious that they received the ability to host the World Cup. But the available data doesn't back the claims just yet. It deserves more attention, but that's something that should be up to the government's of the nationals dying to poke at. An article that takes a single data point and extrapolates it emotionally isn't the type of journalism we should be aiming for -- we've had enough of that over the last few decades.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Markoff 5y ago

Headline like this is reason why I have every day less and less trust in MSM and especially ignore leftist The Guardian.

GoodJokes 5y ago

guru4consulting 5y ago

When working outdoors in middle-eastern countries and the temperature goes above certain range (like 45C/110F range), sirens/alarms are raised to halt the work and give a cool-off period for the workers. My friend worked as an instrumentation engineer in the region and he mentioned about a wide-spread malpractice of recalibrating these monitoring tools to increase the temperature threshold by few degrees. So, the sirens won't sound at 110F but instead will sound only at 115F. And there are many other instances to prove the horrible working conditions and lack of safer work environment. Qatar is relatively less worse compared to the other nearby countries though.