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New documentary reveals that 21,000 laborers have died working Saudi Vision 2030
- andy_ppp 2y agoLet’s not pretend they aren’t effectively slaves even if the are remunerated to some degree, the liberty of a lot of these people in a country like Saudi is almost zero. If I were India (for example) I’d be wanting to make sure people working abroad still were able to leave and hadn’t had passports confiscated and agreed pay disappear at the very least.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIt feels like the solution is, to my privacy ideal dismay, biometrics so that you don't need the passport. You show up at a checkpoint, you're identity proofed on the spot, you get to leave, even if you need to be escorted to the plane by your country's in country diplomatic team. I can already show up at a US embassy or consulate anywhere in the world and provide them my passport serial number to have a new one cut in an hour if I've lost mine, the gap to close is not big policy wise. Otherwise, we're relying on "magic government credential" which can be held hostage to hold a human hostage. Silliness. (India maintains the largest biometrics ID system in the world, Aadhaar, containing the records of 1.3B people: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2022/0425/On-biometric-IDs-India-is-a-laboratory-for-the-rest-of-the-world https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2022/0425...)
- klysm 2y agoI don’t think this is a technology problem…
- toomuchtodo 2y agoAgreed! That is my point. The tech already exists, it is paperwork/policy to fix. Someone must have the will to move the needle for the change to occur. If countries sending folks to these places are complacent, certainly, the problem scope and level of effort required expands rapidly.
- neontomo 2y agowhile your idea has value, I think the point being made is that this is an issue with views on human rights and liberty, not technology.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIn engaging with enterprise and government stakeholders, I have found that if the technology foundation does not exist, it will be used as an excuse to not execute or improve. So, when an issue is raised, if you have come prepared to show that you can solve the problem with existing primitives or systems in a straightforward manner, it becomes much more challenging to assert the problem cannot be solved. "We can solve this today; if you're asserting we can't, be prepared to prove it before the audience expands to encourage accountability." Whether that audience is higher up the leadership ladder, adversarial peer stakeholders more motivated to succeed, the general public, regulators/legislators, or journalists is situation specific.
- bradjohnson 2y agoThe politics of the situation might make a perceived lack of technological solution a convenient scapegoat, that is true. However, from the HN comments section, suggesting a technological solution to a human rights abuse problem doesn't move the needle, because it is not a lack of technology that has caused the human rights abuse. You are responding to a non-issue that hasn't been presented to you and that you have no authority to solve.
- moralestapia 2y agoWrong. It's the opposite. When there's a will, there's a way. Unfortunately, in this situation, there's no will.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rdsubhas 2y agoThis issue is vastly aided and exacerberated by the fact that immediately after unskilled laborers land, the first procedure is their passports are seized, and it's made clear they have to please their employer and work themselves to death to get it back. It changes the entire dynamic straight away: instead of the employer being obliged to keep you, you are now obliged to get back your passport. Yes, there are other factors such as bonded labor, indemnities and local laws taking precedence. But this is such an obvious abuse factor, it makes sense to remove it. Of all the ways to do it, whether it's paid lockers and so on – what the parent comment said is still a cheap way.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> This issue is vastly aided and exacerberated by the fact that immediately after unskilled laborers land, the first procedure is their passports are seized, and it's made clear they have to please their employer and work themselves to death to get it back. It changes the entire dynamic straight away: instead of the employer being obliged to keep you, you are now obliged to get back your passport. Sure, but the local government wants it that way. They won't be the ones to change it!
- falcor84 2y agoBut we're talking about the password issuer (e.g. India), right? They have an interest in protecting their citizens and limiting the power of other local governments to abuse them
- blackoil 2y agoTo exit a country, you need to pass their immigration which may require same physical passport on which person has entered. Also, India/Pakistan wouldn't want to antagonize the Saudis as billions in forex flow via these workers. So, it is the cost of being poor.
- ceejayoz 2y agoNo. Saudi Arabia's requirement of a passport to exit the country is what permits this abuse. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/SaudiArabia.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra... > A valid passport is required for U.S. citizens to enter or exit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
- some_random 2y agoIt's not a technology problem, but since technology pervades every element of modern society it's an aspect. Passport theft is a significant part of how modern slavery functions internationally, and a technological solution isn't weird to discuss on a technology forum.
- glitchc 2y agoThat's not a solution. Those people arrive to the Middle East of their own free will. Everyone in India knows about the abuse, including the labourers and their families. It's just that there are no jobs where they come from, and for all its abuse, the gulf countries pay well. It's desperation to make money that drives them there.
- _false 2y ago> I can already show up at a US embassy or consulate anywhere in the world and provide them my passport serial number to have a new one cut in an hour if I've lost mine Do you have any sources to confirm this?
- selectodude 2y ago??? https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/emergencies/lost-stolen-passport-abroad.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
- toomuchtodo 2y agoselectodude's link is canonical imho, but you can also call the Dept. of State Office of Overseas Citizens Services to confirm.
- ukoki 2y agoSimpler to make it the law that foreign workers need to have their passport with them at all times.
- andy_ppp 2y agoSimpler for who?
- lostlogin 2y agoDo you really think that a problem of this scale could exist without it being sanctioned by the government? Saudi wants it this way.
- kragen 2y agoThat way, stealing someone's passport not only keeps them from leaving the country, it also makes them subject to arrest without suspicion of any crime? I suppose that could be useful if you're an employer who wants to keep them from leaving your barracks to go shopping for food somewhere that might offer them a better price. But probably the person you were replying to intended to be searching for ways to defend the workers' human rights, not oppress them more efficiently.
- ukoki 2y agoYes but then the worker says to the police "my employer has stolen my passport" and the employer gets in trouble.
- Tade0 2y agoIt's going to be harder than expected, as it's sort of a tradition in the region, unless you hail from a particularly powerful country like the US. My father worked in Kuwait as an engineer and his passport was locked in a file cabinet at the office, which was unfortunate because he had to fetch it while avoiding gunfire when Saddam Hussein's forces attacked in 1990. It was worth it though, as the document saved his life when Iraqis mistook him for an American and wanted to execute him on that basis.
- maxglute 2y agoIf you're India, and you had surplus of young men who would other wise be unemployed and restless in India, you'd want them to be stuck abroad sending remittences back for as long as possible. I wouldn't underestimate the coordination and indifference of labour supplying nations.
- andy_ppp 2y agoI hadn’t thought about this, it happens because it works for everyone. Quite grotesque.
- jl6 2y agoI suspect the Indian government doesn’t particularly care and benefits from remittances coming back home.
- newsclues 2y agoWhen I read things like this and think about how money can influence culture and politics, and the stupid stuff people are worried about. Are we just fighting each other over Red vs Blue to distract the masses from the real issues around the world?
- isodev 2y agoIt's even more confronting because folks from Saudi Arabia literary own many of the outlets, products and services available in western countries.
- schmidtleonard 2y agoIn high school gov class they taught us that Iran was a theocracy. Not because they lacked democratic rituals, but because religious leaders got to vet all of the candidates. "You can have any color car you want so long as it is black." I look at the campaign finance process in the US and I see a vetting process for compatibility with the interests of the wealthy. There are still a few small donors in there and every once in a blue moon a candidate can mount something approaching a grassroots campaign, so the US is one drop of poison short of a plutocracy, but only one drop short.
- cen4 2y agoWell you have to start by asking why lot of people's identity is tied to wealth accumulation, status accumulation and conspicuous consumption?
- Maken 2y agoHas "stop supporting the Gulf absolute monarchies" even been part of any presidential debate?
- thinkingtoilet 2y agoAmerica is a global super power. Red vs. Blue has real life consequences for many people in other parts of the world.
- sixQuarks 2y agoBingo
- jajko 2y agoThe stories from that place in past years and their consistency... How workers or nannies are treated like literal slaves, sanctioned or not (or at least out in plain sight and completely unpunished). Nepalis, Philipinos and similar nationalities with 0 possibilities to defend themselves, and often even run away since passports were forcibly taken. That place has absolutely nothing in common with western morals and mindset, rather being few centuries behind. Think about it next time you buy any product from there (and good luck with oil obviously, so this crap falls on most of us in tiny pieces). But I guess military bases there trump some pesky human rights, as long as they are not westerners.
- jkdufair 2y agoGetting easier to avoid buying their oil. One of the reasons I switched to an EV.
- JohnMakin 2y agoUnless your EV is powered by 100% renewables and you completely avoid plastic products somehow you're probably still consuming it in some way. Ethical consumption isn't really possible in today's world, unfortunately. Nearly anything you touch is the result of slave labor or human rights abuses somewhere.
- ziddoap 2y ago>you're probably still consuming it in some way Perfect is the enemy of good, etc. Using less is better than using more. Buying as ethically as you are reasonably able to do is better than not trying to buy ethically at all.
- JohnMakin 2y ago> Buying as ethically as you are reasonably able to do is better than not trying to buy ethically at all. I'm not suggesting at all to do the latter - merely pointing out that the GP comment seemed to be under the impression that purchasing an EV vehicle was avoiding saudi oil. Many people are under similar impressions about their consumption choices. Being aware of the consequences of your choices is just as important.
- bhouston 2y ago21,000 people seems like a massive amount of dead. I know that Saudi Arabia and other gulf states abuse foreign workers horribly, but can the death tool really be that high? That works out to 3,000 per year. That seems incredibly high. How can that only be coming out now? That is way more than the number of Chinese deaths building Canada's railway, which I always thought was a poster child for immigrant abuse: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-pacific-railway#:~:text=Upward%20of%2015%2C000%20Chinese%20labourers,died%20working%20on%20the%20railway https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-p.... Turns out that 30% of the population in Saudi Arabia is foreign workers, so 10M or so, thus 21,000 is roughly one dead per 500 foreign workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabi... This 21,000 deaths, is it including natural deaths or something other than dying as a result of the job? If it is true, then we need intervention as the death toll is approaching what one would expect in war zone.
- umeshunni 2y agoThe actual report says that 21000 foreign workers have died in Saudi Arabia (of all causes) since 2017, in a population of 5M+ so youe first guess is probably right.
- talldayo 2y ago> How can that only be coming out now? I mean, it's not. There have been estimated death tolls available for years, but people don't ever care. You can safely assume that once this documentary is released, people still won't care.
- bhouston 2y ago> There have been estimated death tolls available for years, but people don't ever care. Can you share?
- talldayo 2y agohttps://alqst.org/ar/posts/808 https://alqst.org/ar/posts/808 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/05/saudi-arabia-un-experts-alarmed-imminent-executions-linked-neom-project https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/05/saudi-arabia...
- hprotagonist 2y ago"significantly worse than the pyramids in every way, 4600 years later" doesn't really inspire confidence.
- CapitalTntcls 2y ago> Borg also said South Asian laborers working on NEOM were “fucking morons” so “that is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.” He also said Gulf women were “tranvestites.” "Why do you hate billionaires so much?"
- wormlord 2y agoDo you think pundits will count these deaths as "deaths as a direct result of capitalism" or will they say "no that is not real capitalism!".
- CapitalTntcls 2y ago"On real free marked this would never happen!". It would be funny if was not so sad.
- animal_spirits 2y agoThis is a near trillion dollar government initiative to plan a post-oil economy. This isn't a result of the free market.
- wormlord 2y agolike clockwork...
- animal_spirits 2y agoI’m an easy catch with bait like that. Doesn’t change the facts though
- wormlord 2y agoI am of the opinion that the Free Market is a fiction which has never existed and can never exist. The belief in a fictitious "Free Market" which is just a platonic ideal, is equally as ideological as a Marxist belief in a "new man" that arises from living under Socialism, however one of these ideas is considered hocum and the other is orthodoxy that is taught in elite universities. People who defend capitalism will point out that "well there is some market inefficiency (government interference, authoritarianism, subsidies) that actually makes this not real capitalism". In this example Saudi Arabia is a monarchist petrostate spending government money on stupid projects, so that's actually "not capitalism". This is the same as the meme of people saying "not real communism" when someone asks how they feel about Lenin murdering a bunch of people. Instead we should understand that capitalism is about private ownership of property, NOT a fictitious "Free Market" as Milton Friedman tried to re-center the conversation around. Understanding that capitalism is about ownership, and not markets, makes it clear that authoriatrianism and capitalism go hand-in-hand, as a strong and violent government exists to enforce the property rights of the owning class. The power structure of Saudi Arabia is fully compatible with capitalism as it exists throughout the "west" or the "free world".
- beepbooptheory 2y ago> Earlier, in May, AN reported that plans from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration were revealed that showed a speculative train line connecting NEOM and a new city built atop Gaza, Palestine. Sometimes it all just feels like some big formal exercise to mix different terrible aspects into new configurations, to see what might emerge. Just kind of feels like a Frankenstein's monster world.
- newprint 2y agoConstruction sites deaths are gruesome by nature. I feel terrible for those people. Thanks god, we have OSHA (& hopefully, it will not be dismantled as it has been touted)
- cybrox 2y agoEveryone travelling to, enjoying holiday in, or visiting events in Saudia Arabia, the UAE and gulf states with a comparable state of development has their blood on their hands. Yet still, people - especially in the tech industry - tend to romaticize and frequent some of these places. Absurd.
- sixQuarks 2y agoEveryone who has filled up at a Chevron gas station has blood on their hands too. Let’s not throw rocks when we live in glass houses ourselves. https://youtu.be/9OtIAZMqrZE?si=TDdwHNnPwD7hu3CY https://youtu.be/9OtIAZMqrZE?si=TDdwHNnPwD7hu3CY
- jkestner 2y ago"Yet you participate in society!" defeatism. If we can't criticize the system without being part of it, then no one can criticize it. Simply living passively requires fossil fuels for most people. Actively patronizing these countries is an intentional act.
- sixQuarks 2y agoYou obviously didn’t watch the video.
- cybrox 2y ago[Bad thing A] does not make [Bad thing B] less valid. This is an equally important story to be told.
- aguaviva 2y agoDo you understand the distinction between: (1) Filing up at the tank so you can get to your shitty job and feed your family -- i.e. an activity that is essentially non-optional; and (2) Going on a vacation more than halfway around the world -- an activity which is definitely quite optional ?
- password54321 2y ago
- stonethrowaway 2y ago[flagged]
- ismail 2y agoAgreed. Would have expected a more thoughtful analysis. Though found this to be a bit light. Not against it, though i think a better analysis or link to something else would have been better
- exhilaration 2y agoI personally think it's relevant because of the tech investments that the Saudis are making around the world. Based on my years of reading Hacker News, I feel the focus here is is about VC/investment/business first, "hacking" topics second.
- rsync 2y agoI disagree. There is a tremendous amount of technical integration needing to be done for this project and others in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, etc. Many of the people who do, or might, take part in that work are here on this forum And I think a frank discussion of these issues is on topic.
- stonethrowaway 2y agoConjectures aside on the % of the posters on here that overlap with work and sphere of influence surrounding this exact topic, you can have that frank discussion elsewhere. Hacker News is not the forum for that.
- rsync 2y agoTell me more about what HN is for …
- stonethrowaway 2y agoFrom the guidelines, first two: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. This topic by far does not gratify one’s intellectual curiosity, which is what I opened my thread with. It is dog-piling and that can be done elsewhere. The discussions don’t provide anything interesting nor anything new that a curious mind can grab and hold onto.
- ggm 2y agoI'd like a more credible source for the statistics. I would hope the SA demographics community wants to be transparent, I am less sure the SA Gov wants to help here. An expose by ITV is not how I want to get authentic figures for death rate on a long term engineering project.
- actionfromafar 2y agoWhat is the SA demographics community?
- ggm 2y agoThe academics, and demographers in governments who have to understand the population behaviours because it goes to financial and state planning. 20,000+ working people dying has consequence, even if it's only as minor as needing diggers to bury them. 20,000 surplus deaths in the construction sector is remarkable. The labour hire companies have a significant problem on their hands recruiting labour if this continues. The guardian analysis of deaths constructing the Qatar World cup venues was based on returns from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan. So, if 30,000 migrant workers have died doing Neom, Surely the same sources can confirm this?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- game_the0ry 2y agoThere has been a bunch of info on Dubai's relationship with foreign workers [1, 2], so it does not surprise that Saudi has the same problems. Underneath the veneer of mid-east progress, there are bodies buried underneath skyscrapers. The most frustrating part -- I am south asian and my family thinks that Dubai is admirable. when I show them docs that say otherwise, they collapse into a state of denial. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelMtGr0DKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelMtGr0DKI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MJS1ijshHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MJS1ijshHA
- actionfromafar 2y agoOh these Dubai-admirers are around everywhere. If something has gold and luxury, it's good, apparently.
- idunnoman1222 2y agoSensationalist article 20 K is meaningless and unless we know the scale. how many foreign workers are there in Saudi Arabia 10 million? Plenty of countries have similar deaths per capita per year in construction (and many other jobs) and let’s also compare it to historical deaths for construction in Saudi Arabia per capita I bet it’s only been getting better nice to live in the first world where they have safety standards and stuff, but not everybody has that luxury. Also before you start whingeing about how it’s de facto slavery, please tell me when it wasn’t de facto slavery in Saudi Arabia?
- BurningFrog 2y agoThis is probably a rerun of the Qatar World Cup 2022 reporting. We were told that 6500 guest workers had died in workplace accidents building the stadiums, and everyone got very upset. But that was very misleading. 6500 was the number of deaths for any reason among ~1M guest workers. That is a perfectly normal death rate in a population that size. The official Qatari statistics was that 37 world cup construction workers died, and only 3 of those were work-related accidents. This info was of course reported far less.
- snakeyjake 2y ago> That is a perfectly normal death rate in a population that size. That is a mortality rate of 650 per 100k. That is not normal. That is horrific. That is irrefutable, unquestionable, evidence of systemic abuse and/or neglect. That is double the mortality rate in US federal prisons more than double the mortality rate of the US state prison population. That is roughly double the typical mortality rate of US adults aged 25-64. (~340 per 100k) and due to a variety of reasons (e.g. obesity, lack of access to healthcare) the US's working-age mortality rate is among the worst in the industrialized world. "Roughly double" of "among the worst" is not "perfectly normal". Please do not make excuses for the Qataris. High and Rising Mortality Rates Among Working-Age Adults. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on National Statistics; Committee on Population; Committee on Rising Midlife Mortality Rates and Socioeconomic Disparities; Becker T, Majmundar MK, Harris KM, editors. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2021 Mar 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571942/#:~:text=Between%202010%20and%202017%2C%20the,%5BCDC%5D%2C%202020b https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK571942/#:~:text=Betwee...). Mortality in State and Federal Prisons, 2001–2019 – Statistical Tables. E. Ann Carson, Ph.D., BJS Statistician, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 2021, NCJ 300953 https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/msfp0119st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/msfp0119st.pdf
- kragen 2y agoThe 340 per 100k death rate you report is 340 deaths per year per 100k population. How many years did the Qatari World Cup stadiums take to build? The implications are different if the answer is "⅓" or if the answer is "3". 650 deaths per 100k over 3 years would be only 220 deaths per year per 100k. As I said in another comment, migrant workers are generally young men, and their average death rate in the US is closer to 200 deaths per year per 100k population. Higher, as Retric pointed out, among construction workers.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt’s believable, there are a lot of people in the world. Fentanyl is used to poison nearly 100k Americans annually, most who don’t even know they are being poisoned by it. Most Americans don’t know this level of destruction is happening and it’s right here, why would we be expected to notice slave labor deaths far off?
- qblv 2y agoSomebody who has lived in that country for a decade and presently in America. I hate to say this but medieval slavery exists in Saudi Arabia. I would recommend watching "The Goat Life" even though it shows 25% of reality it is still a good start.
- elashri 2y agoI don't know why people are keep down voting every comment that is trying to ask what does this number include. Is it the number of work-related accidents for workers in these projects? Or does it contain every death of the workforce and how much is the workforce? Is it 100k foriegn workers or 1M or more? Doew this include deaths of worker families or just workers? And in the article they refer to hindustan times article that 100K disappeared. At the same time they say that > He has invested trillions in his ‘Saudi vision 2030 project Which does not convey confidence in their handling of numbers given who know thay the aim for the project at most to get 500B investment from government ans external investment (which unlikely to happen). So back to the question, what does dissappear here means? Are they killed or dead like the Journalist killed by MBS. That seem unlikely and something is missing here. I know that many people have ideological reasons to down vote and consider every question about numbers a defense towards MBS. Which is a toxic behavior because we shouldn't just take anything the supports our ideology or previous opinions at face value if it is not supported by evidence or if there is questions about that.
- advisedwang 2y ago> I don't know why people are keep down voting every comment that is trying to ask what does this number include. Is it the number of work-related accidents for workers in these projects? Or does it contain every death of the workforce and how much is the workforce? Is it 100k foriegn workers or 1M or more? Doew this include deaths of worker families or just workers? The death rate is so high that there is basically no acceptable reason why it would be that way. Even if deaths are not on-the-job, the living conditions, pay, healthcare etc are controlled by the project anyway so the blame is the same. Given this all the minutiae would probably only bring the "reasonable to blame the Saudi" death toll down to, say, an equally shocking 20500. So it does look like bringing up minutiae is really just a distraction. Now if there was some reason to suggest the 21000 was fabricated or off by enormous margins, sure, that would be worth discussing. But nobody has brought up something like that.
- elashri 2y agoThe problem is that you are saying death rate is so high but neither you or the article gave a rate. The number 21000 is not a rate and even if we forget about denominator. We still don't know how this number is constructed (might be lower or higher). What does the count process and how the data is collected. And as I asked before does this count family members or not (happened with many reports regarding world cup in qatar) Now to construct rate you will need to say even if this number is correct (which we don't know) against what denominator especially if people want to compare it against death rate in different countries like some people did with US. The report here raises many real questions that people would need to think about. I don't defend Saudi Arabia and I hate their working system for obvious reasons.
- moralestapia 2y agoLol. Why is this flagged?
- greatgib 2y agoIt was demonstrated a lot of times that these kind of country put a considerable amount or resources and money to silence disturbing info against them. Like when they corrupted international committee for football cups and co...
- maxglute 2y agoFrom official vision 2030 site: >Vision 2030 creates a thriving economy where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. Kek aside, Saudi has limited time/window to pivot away from fossil economy. Sometimes you have to trade bodies for time, and it's much easier to trade bodies of non citizens. Vision 2030 is MBS' 2015 pet project, with 15-20 years to deliver for domestic politics. Even if you think this is vanity project, there's a lot of politics behind it, and dead foreigners for domestic politics is... well fair game. Consolation prize is we might get some cool monuments out of this instead of a war torn country.
- bitsage 2y agoThis article seems to be conflating laborers dying during 7 years, and laborers dying while working on a few projects. Considering Saudi Arabia’s immigration system, or lack thereof, practically everyone who’s not a citizen is a foreign worker, and South Asians make up the lion share of the 10 million foreign workers. Are we looking at 21k dying out of a 6 million+ population over 7 years, or 21k dying out of a much smaller construction pool for a few projects? This same narrative was told about the Qatar World Cup, only for the “World Cup deaths” to actually be total cumulative foreign labor deaths. It took the wind out of the movement to get the Gulf countries to reform their treatment of foreign workers.
- tartoran 2y agoMy guess is some Saudis flagged this post.
- qblv 2y ago100%
- uptownfunk 2y agowhy is this flagged?