World Cup 2022: The Dark Side of the Qatar Dream

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/workers-preparing-for-2022-world-cup-treated-poorly-in-doha-a-974470.html



Qatar is spending billions to build hotels, subways, shopping centers and stadiums ahead of the World Cup in 2022. But those working on the projects are poorly paid and poorly housed. And some of them can't leave.

World Cup 2022: The Dark Side of the Qatar Dream
By Christoph Scheuermann
June 11, 2014 – 05:34 PM

Beneath their hardhats, the workers laboring away at the construction sites in Qatar wear thin cotton balaclavas as protection against the morning chill and the midday sun. The preferred headgear has only a thin slit for the eyes, making it look as though the city were being erected by ghosts. But the men have been charged with transforming the Gulf state into a glitzy paradise, complete with hotels, office buildings, shopping malls and football stadiums. And the first thing the desert takes from them is their faces.

Ganesh was one of these phantoms. He has since returned to his family in Nepal's southeast. He could hardly wait to leave Qatar. Ganesh has promised himself to never again set foot in the desert.

On this spring evening, though, Ganesh's trip back home still lies before him. He is sprawled out exhausted on his bed on the outskirts of Doha after finishing his shift. The room is just 16 square meters (172 square feet) -- and provides shelter to 10 workers. With the fan broken and the window sealed shut with aluminum foil, the air is thick and stuffy. Outside, a diesel generator roars. It is only with great effort that Ganesh, a cheerful, somewhat shy 26-year-old with jet black hair hanging to his shoulders, is able to suppress his frustration and fatigue.

The building is a gray concrete block located in a part of Doha where the city gives way to housing projects, bus parking lots and factory warehouses. On the map, the area is simply labeled "industrial zone." But it is home to the thousands of faceless workers, the place where they eat and sleep. In Ganesh's building, 100 workers are housed on three floors, far away from the glittery hotels in the city center. They live on the edge of a dream that the sheikhs want to make reality.