on October 25th, 2016

The first worker to die of a “work-related” incident at one of Qatar’s World Cup 2022 stadiums, has been mourned by the organizers of the tournament.  The worker was reportedly hit by a water truck at the Al Wakrah stadium and has become the first person to die whilst physically working at a Qatari stadium. “It is with deep regret we announce a work-related fatality on one of our projects. A full investigation is underway to determine the factors which contributed to the death of one of our workers,” The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy said on their website.  Three workers had previously died at World Cup construction sites in what organizers claimed were non-work-related circumstances. 

EIT Stock ImageOne of the non-work-related incidents involved a 52-year-old painter who died working on the main stadium, the Khalifa International Stadium. The organizers say he died of cardiac arrest in one of the site’s dining halls a year ago. 

Qatar has been under constant scrutiny for the labor conditions the workers have had put up with since construction on the 2022 venues began. Ninety-four percent of the workforce involved in the construction of World Cup venues are of South Asian background ; Pakistanis, Bangladeshis. Indians and Nepalese people. There are 1.4 million migrant workers in the country. The country was criticized by the International Trade Union Confederation in 2013 who reported that 1,239 deaths had occurred from 2011 to 2013 in Qatar. They also said that 4,000 migrant workers would die before a ball is kicked off in 2022, irrespective of whether they work on World Cup venues or not. It is in their, and other groups like Amnesty International’s opinion that a World Cup should not take place in a country where worker deaths happen at an unprecedented level. 

EIT Stock Image“FIFA has not done enough to address the situation from the very beginning. It should have known even before it awarded the World Cup to Qatar, that this is an environment where labor abuse is endemic. In its bidding process, it made no mention of human rights, let alone labor rights,” said Mustafa Qadri, a researcher for Amnesty International. 

Qatar’s World Cup will bring engineering jobs to the country in industries including transport – a new railway system is planned – new hotels and of course, the new stadiums. They are also planning to install state-of-the-art air conditioning in the stadiums. 

However, Amnesty International say the workers’ situation has not improved since it was exposed in 2013/14. One of the workers, speaking anonymously to the NGO said: “I am an electrician, and I agreed to electrician’s work. But when I came to Qatar, they only gave me electrician work for the first two months. After that, they said I had to do iron fitting work.” 

 

Engineering Innovation 

EIT Stock ImageEngineers at Qatar University have been utilizing rapid prototyping technology to 3D print models of the stadiums. They will use these models in weather simulation tests in their labs to test their resilience to sand storms that might flare up during the World Cup. Regardless of their hosting in winter, the stadiums will be used in summer as well, and that is when most sand storms occur. 

They will test the model by putting it in a wind tunnel and letting the wind run over it, testing both for weather and inside-stadium temperature. Qatar University Professor Dr. Saud Abdul Aziz Abdu Ghani, talking to Doha News, said: “We can see the temperature per tier, add in variants as sweat produced and amount of spectators, and then run simulation and see the effect on the temperature inside the stadium. For the cooling, we want a minimal amount of air to go in, and we want the air inside to stay there. We can change the direction and stimulate different directions at this facility.” 

According to the engineers, the aerodynamic testing and modifications have led to good results. One of the stadiums, after aerodynamic model testing, revealed that it didn’t need as much steel as the designers initially thought. 

The engineers lauded aerodynamics testing and said it is the future of building design. 

 

 

 

 

 


      

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