GENEVA, Oct 13: FIFA wants to help workers in Qatar get compensation for being injured while building projects for the World Cup, one of the football body’s top officials told European lawmakers on Thursday.
Football federations in Europe have supported calls for a fund since Amnesty International said FIFA should contribute $440 million toward reparations — matching the total prize money FIFA will pay to the 32 national teams playing in Qatar next month.
Qatar has faced intense scrutiny of the physical and contractual conditions for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who were needed in the tiny emirate since the World Cup hosting rights were won 12 years ago.
Compensation is “certainly something that we’re interested in progressing,” FIFA deputy secretary general Alasdair Bell told a Council of Europe session on labour rights in Qatar.
“It’s important to try to see that anyone who suffered injury as a consequence of working in the World Cup, that that is somehow redressed,” Bell told lawmakers from the 46-nation group at their meeting in Strasbourg, France.
FIFA was urged on Thursday to use its leverage with the World Cup host nation by the official who publicly criticised Qatar when global football leaders met in Doha this year.
Ensuring compensation is paid should be a key target for FIFA to secure a positive legacy in Qatar after the World Cup, Norwegian football federation president Lise Klaveness told lawmakers.
“It is difficult to frame it in but it is necessary, also for historical abuses, injuries and deaths,” she said, adding that a lack of independent investigations of unexplained worker fatalities in Qatar was an “elephant in the room.”
FIFA’s Bell agreed with Klaveness that a reparations fund “is not the simplest thing to put into place” and would need clear rules and oversight.
“But this is certainly something that we’re interested in progressing,” he said.
It was not specified on Thursday if compensation money should come from FIFA, Qatari authorities or the construction firms who employed the workers, many from south Asia and the Philippines. (AP)
