In a bid to make soccer fans who will be visiting Qatar for the FIFA World Cup 2023 comfortable, Qatar has forcefully evicted thousands of foreign workers from their apartmenets in the centre of the capital Doha where the soccer fans would be staying.
Reuters disclosed that the workers who were evicted, said, more than a dozen buildings had been evacuated and shut down by authorities, forcing the mainly Asian and African workers to seek what shelter they could – including bedding down on the pavement outside one of their former homes.
This development comes less than four weeks before November 20 which is scheduled forbthe global soccer tournament to begin,this has drawn intense international scrutiny of Qatar’s treatment of foreign workers and its restrictive social laws.
It was gathered that authorities, told some persons at about 8pm on Wednesday that had just two hours to evacuate a particular building which the residents of the area said was occupied by 1,200 people in Doha’s Al Mansoura district.
“Municipal officials returned around 10.30 pm, forced everyone out and locked the doors to the building”, they said. Some men had not been able to return in time to collect their belongings.
“We don’t have anywhere to go,” one man told Reuters the next day as he prepared to sleep out for a second night with around 10 other men, some of them shirtless in the autumn heat and humidity of the Gulf Arab state.
Reuters reported that the man and most other workers spoke to them on the ground of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities or their employers.
Mohammed, a driver from Bangladesh, said he had lived in the same neighbourhood for 14 years until Wednesday, when the municipality told him he had 48 hours to leave the villa he shared with 38 other people.
He said labourers who built up the infrastructure for Qatar to host the World Cup were being pushed aside as the tournament approaches.
“Who made the stadiums? Who made the roads? Who made everything? Bengalis, Pakistanis. People like us. Now they are making us all go outside.”
Speaking on this occurence,a qatari government official, claimed that the evictions are not in any way related to the World Cup and were designed “in line with ongoing comprehensive and long-term plans to re-organise areas of Doha.”
“All have since been rehoused in safe and appropriate accommodation,” the official said, adding that requests to vacate “would have been conducted with proper notice.”
World soccer’s governing body FIFA did not respond to a request for comment and Qatar’s World Cup organisers directed inquiries to the government.
