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Surendra Tamang was the one who came up with the idea of going to the World Cup in 2022.
He heard that many Nepalis were being recruited to work in the construction of stadiums and related infrastructure projects in the Middle East. He took out a loan in order to get a construction job. He was going to work up until the World Cup so that he could buy a ticket to the last match. He would return to Nepal triumphant, rich, and with a World Cup T-shirt featuring his favorite player.
Instead, in October 2021, he was sent home with a mysterious, crippling ailment that his employers dismissed as gastritis,chronic indigestion, and claimed had nothing to do with the hard working conditions at his work site. By the time he arrived at a Kathmandu hospital in pain, both of his kidneys had given out, wrecked by working long hours in punishing heat, according to his doctor. Tamang says he used to have dreams. He will have to watch the World Cup on his phone for the rest of his life because there are no potential donors.
Every four years, World Cup host countries open their doors to millions of fans, investing national pride in ever more fantastic stadiums purpose built for the world's most popular sport. A preview of future technologies can be found in the $200 billion of construction that has been done in the country. The kinds of record-breaking heat waves that roasted Asia, Europe, and North America this summer are no longer extreme events, but seasonal norms brought about by a changing climate. Warming temperatures will make outdoor labor more dangerous to human health across most of the globe.
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The World Cup will start five months later this year in order to spare players and fans the worst of the heat. A building boom in one of the hottest places on the planet took more than a decade to get ready for the tournament. A global supply chain of workers willing to work in any conditions was used to make it happen. Nepal, India, and Bangladesh make up more than two thirds of the foreign workforce in the country. Poor working conditions have been a factor in the deaths of thousands of workers over the past decade.
When the World Cup was announced 12 years ago, the average daily high temperature in the city was 1.7F warmer than it is today. The Middle East is one of the warmest places on the planet. In some parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, just going outside for a few hours will exceed the upper limit for survivability, even with idealized conditions of perfect health, total activity, and lack of clothing. Work will be impossible under those conditions.
Workers can still be protected from the effects of excessive heat in the present day. It is a stain on the country's legacy that so many were not. It is a chance to learn. The World Cup spotlight forced drastic changes in labor regulations that, since their implementation last year, have made Qatar a world leader in heat protection and a useful laboratory for a better understanding of what works and what doesn't. The increase in heat stress will result in 80 million full-time jobs being lost by the year 2030. The recent heat waves have spurred international campaigns to get heat recognized as an occupational hazard, and labor activists as well as government entities are pushing for stronger regulations and laws to protect outdoor workers. The template could be provided byQatar.
Too Hot to Work, a new documentary from TIME, online this Nov.In the spring of 2015, Surendra Tamang arrived in the Middle East. He was not prepared for the heat of the Gulf. One of his first tasks at the Doha Oasis construction site, which was his place of employment for six years, was in scaffolding, an assignment that required a heavy harness and a hard hat, which sent rivulets of sweat cascading down his body. When the summer peaked at 112F (44.4C), he and his fellow laborers took a break only for a few hours at lunch to escape the heat. He was used to the bloody noses, headaches, muscle pains, and vomiting that came with work in the summer season. Several of his colleagues collapsed from heat exhaustion. He did a few times as well. Time reached out to Tamang's employers, but received no response.
It's not just hot inQatar, it's also humid and dangerous. Sweat that cools as it evaporates is the only way the human body can deal with heat. A rise in core temperature and organ failure can be caused by the higher humidity. The WBGT is an index used by scientists to assess the impact of heat and humidity. It combines temperature, humidity, and solar-radiation into a single number that is expressed as a temperature. The threshold of survivability is defined as a WBGT above 95F. The red line for heat injury is a reading of 90.5F. It is the equivalent of 93F at 50% humidity in a late summer afternoon.
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Construction companies were forced to divide their work into early-morning and late-afternoon shifts because of the ban on outdoor work. Tamang started his day at 4 a.m. so he could eat breakfast and prepare his lunch at the company-run worker colony. The WBGT was even higher because of the high humidity in the morning hours.
Even the Marines would consider the heat conditions at Tamang to be dangerous. Tamang worried that his employer would dock his pay or send him back to Nepal if he took too many breaks. The bottles of cold water that were nearby cost the same as a Coca-Cola, so he chose to drink soda. He didn't want to have to climb down to use the toilets, so he tried not to drink anything.
Over time, Tamang's bouts of dizziness, nausea, muscle weakness, and fatigue became too much for him to continue working. He was given medicine for gastritis by the doctor at the construction company. It was too late for the company to move him to desk work in an air-conditioned office because of his symptoms. He says company doctors warned him about his blood pressure, but never tested him for the disease. He had to return to his dormitory for two weeks without pay. He was terminated by the construction company and sent back to Nepal.
The bulk of Tamang's $400-a-month salary was going to his family, part of a $10 billion river of money that flows into Nepal every year from Nepali migrant workers. Climate change is making agriculture increasingly unreliable and has made the transfers an essential buffer against floods.
Indrajit Mandal, a rice farmer in the southern Nepali village of Nagarain, paid a recruiters equivalent of $1,200 to get a job in the Persian Gulf state. Nepal does not allow recruiting fees for foreign labor contracts. Indrajit says that people are coming back with diseases. We have no choice but to ignore this. Indrajit believes that his uncle's death this year was caused by chronic exposure to extreme heat. Cardiac arrest is often cited as the cause of death for migrant workers in the Middle East. Most of these people are young and healthy, and all of them need to pass a basic health screening before they can get a work visa. There is a high rate of cardiovascular disease listed as the cause of death among migrant workers.
The study found that cardiovascular disease was the cause of death for almost half of the Nepali migrant-worker deaths in the country. The death rates due to heart attack went down to 22% in the winter and went up to 42% in the summer. Many of the deaths occurred during periods when the WBGT exceeded 87F (31C), leading the authors to conclude that at least 200 men died from heat injuries sustained by working. Employers are required to pay compensation only if a death is work related, which is usually narrowly construed as taking place at the work site. Indrajit's uncle had a heart attack at the end of a hard day of work. Severe problems can be caused by even relatively low levels of heat stress.
25 years ago, when the National Kidney Center was founded, Dr. Rishi Kumar Kafle expected to serve older patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes. The average age of his patients decreased over the years. The majority of his younger patients had recently been employed abroad. Returnees from the Gulf countries make up 10% of his caseload today. The young men coming back from the Gulf are healthy. They are in good physical shape. Then suddenly they lose their ability to excrete urine. It means that there is something going on in the Gulf. He says that a number of factors are at play, including dehydration, bad diet, stress, and excessive use of painkillers. The main problem is heat.
Dehydration, rest breaks, and respite from the sun are the solutions. A study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine shows that when sugarcane workers are allowed to take frequent water breaks in the shade, they are less likely to get sick. There's water. It's time to rest. There's a shade. That is not rocket science. The price is not expensive. According to the lead author of the study, the worker safety plan saves lives.
It's hard for kids to be active in extreme heat. Exercise is important in a warming world.
The International Trade Union Confederation warned that 4,000 migrant workers would die before the opening match of the World Cup due to the country's exploitative labor practices. The projections were based on a tally of migrant worker deaths in 2012 and 2013 released by the Indian and Nepali embassies. An investigation by the Guardian in February of this year found that more than 6,000 workers have died in the country since the World Cup was awarded to it.
The World Cup isn't the only thing that's going on inQatar.
Over 3000 construction projects were completed in 2020. Construction cranes compete with skyscrapers as the dominant feature of the city skyline. The awarding of the World Cup may have galvanized the pace of development, but not all of it is meant to cater to fans. The government has worked to transform the gas rich nation into a business and transportation hub for the region, as well as building the city-state into a modern metropolis with the addition of hundreds of office.
The most egregious abuses happen at private construction projects like Tamang's that have little to do with soccer. The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy employed less than 2% of the country's migrant labor force over the past 10 years. Some of the non-World Cup sites are regulated. Time was given permission to visit a privately run work site, a luxury residential complex that won't be completed until after the World Cup is over, with officials from the Ministry of Labor. The workers appeared content with the regulations governing heat protection. On the day we visited, they complained of the heat but were allowed to take breaks in cooled rest areas when it became too hot. The laborers from other sites that TIME was not allowed to visit described the one we did as an exception. One Nepali health-and-safety supervisor, who has been employed on Qatari construction sites since 2002, and who asked not to be named for fear of losing his job, said conditions are improving, but still not fast enough to save lives.
In May, several labor and human-rights organizations demanded that FIFA set aside $440 million, the same amount it hands out in World Cup prize money. The campaign has received international support and is being considered by the sport's governing body. It will be hard to differentiate between World Cup workers and those laboring on construction sites that may or may not have been inspired by the World Cup announcement.
According to an assessment released by Building and Wood Worker's International, construction sites run by the Supreme Committeeensured a higher than industry level of protection. The Supreme Committee's executive director for workers' welfare and labor rights says all World Cup work sites have hydration breaks. They closed during the hottest part of the day and gave workers cooling suits. They were able to take breaks whenever they needed them. Qutub says that these health-and-safety protocols reduced workplace-related deaths during the World Cup construction effort. The U.N.'s backing of those numbers reflects an overly strict definition of work related. A shuttle-bus accident on the way to a work site is one of the causes cited in the Supreme Committee's annual reports. Even if those deaths are included, the World Cup construction-site fatality rate is much lower than the work site fatality rate as a whole.
The government made it a priority this year. The ILO and other experts were brought in to conduct a study of the country's labor conditions in order to implement reforms. They spent a lot of time on work sites. To help researchers understand the effects of high heat and humidity, some workers agreed to ingest electronic devices that could record body temperatures and dehydration levels.
Adding an extra hour and a half to the daily midday outdoor work ban in summer would result in a reduction of 586 work hours annually according to the researchers. They advised companies to establish cooled rest areas and implement hydration protocols, as well as setting a maximum WBGT threshold of 89.7F (32.1C), at which point all outdoor work would cease.
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According to the founder of the University of Thessaly's FAME laboratory, it's still too high, but it's a workable compromise. Flouris said that 32.1C keeps workers safe. It keeps the economy going because it hurts worker health. His team recommended that all outdoor workers be screened for hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic conditions so that they can be moved to less strenuous positions. The kafala sponsorship system that tied workers to their employers and did not allow them to change jobs or leave the country is over. The recommendations were turned into law by the country. The world's most progressive heat-protection strategy was adopted by a country known for worker oppression. There is anecdotal evidence that the new policy ofQatar has changed. In the summer of 2020 there were 1,520 admissions to health clinics for heat-related disorders, but that number dropped to 351 in the same year.
Government data on worker deaths and injuries before and after the new law are not available to researchers. According to Flouris, there is a gold mine of data that could be used to establish and refine heat protection policies for workers around the world, but so far it is not willing to share it. It could prevent future deaths by exposing past mistakes. You can't find a better natural laboratory in the world. It is possible to protect workers anywhere if you can. You look great when you own it. It could be said, 'We messed up.' No one has been doing this correctly. We are going to make sure that what happened here never happens elsewhere.
More than 450 work sites were shut down by the Ministry of Labor for violating the heat protection policy. The ministry has no capacity to enforce, so violators are often back in business within days. Ambet E. Yuson is the general secretary of Building and Wood Worker's International.
The best way to enforce the new policy is to make workers aware of their rights. It looks like it is not looking good. The migrant laborers were arrested or deported for protesting their wages. If workers who haven't been paid a salary for seven months are deported for complaining, what does that say about them being willing to stand up for their rights on the job?
Tamang thinks he would have made it to the final if he had worked on a stadium project instead of a hotel. The Supreme Committee says that productivity and protection can go hand in hand. When the last World Cup fan leaves, will worker health be a priority?
Tamang isn't sure. As he waits for his appointment to end at Nepal's National Kidney Center, he listens to messages from friends who stayed behind in the Middle East to work on other projects. A former roommate complains of terrible work conditions and abusive behavior. Tamang said he was not surprised. I was expecting something like that.
Reporting by Sweta Koirala, Emily Barone, andLeslie Dickstein.
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