When the world’s top footballers line up for the World Cup in 2034, their outrageous skills will likely be on show at Aramco Stadium in Al Khobar, a city on the east coast of Saudi Arabia.
Construction at the stadium, one of 15 proposed in Saudi’s bid to host the tournament, is already well underway. Images of the completed 47,000-seater venue show its elegant, overlapping panels glowing golden in the setting sun. Inside, fans decked out in green cheer on the Saudi team. ‘A place for legends to rise… Where communities thrive,’ declares a promotional video.
Yet a months-long investigation, reported from the ground in Saudi Arabia, can reveal for the first time the human cost of the Gulf kingdom’s audacious bid to stamp its mark on the global game.
Behind the site hoardings, plastered with upbeat slogans like, ‘Family Destination’ and ‘Connecting Communities’, hundreds of migrant workers are living the other side of Saudi’s World Cup dream.
The Gulf kingdom’s bid promises a, ‘breathtaking tournament of excitement and innovation’, but the revelations mirror the shocking conditions endured by migrant workers in Qatar, raising the prospect that once again the World Cup will be tarnished by widespread labour rights abuses.
Day after day, the labourers toil through 10-hour shifts in the ferocious heat, heaving steel rods into place, erecting towers of scaffolding and hammering together frames for the giant concrete pillars that will hold up the stadium. For this, some of the men – who mostly come from Bangladesh – say they earn less than £2 an hour.
Saudi Arabia are shortly expected to be awarded the rights to host the 2034 World Cup
Construction of the first of 15 stadiums proposed for the bid has already begun in Al Khobar
But the glitz of football’s greatest event is starkly contrasted by the conditions faced by workers
The heavy metal bars they lug across the site are not the only things weighing them down. They carry huge debts from the fees they had to pay rogue agents to get their jobs in Saudi Arabia. ‘You work for free for two years,’ says one, describing how long it will take just to pay off his debt.
Some of the workers allege their employers withhold the first two to three months of wages, effectively leaving them trapped. ‘It’s not easy to quit this job because they’ve got my money,’ says one who has been working at the stadium for four months but only received one month’s salary. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll ever get paid fully.’
Through the summer, work at the stadium continued in two shifts around the clock – bar a short pause in the middle of the day – despite the extreme heat and humidity, which often topped 45 degrees. ‘We have to endure it,’ says another labourer. ‘We are soaked in sweat. We have to wring out our clothes two or three times a shift.’
At the end of each shift, they are ferried back to a rundown corner of the city, where they return to squalid rooms, up stairwells strewn with rubbish and piles of dust-covered work boots. They strip off their sweat-soaked clothes and collapse onto thin mattresses on the floor or into bunk beds; five or six men packed into tiny spaces, like prison cells. Clothes hang on lines strung across the walls. Cooking pots and personal belongings are stuffed under the beds. Meals are prepared on the floor and cooked up in dirty kitchens, caked in years of grime.
It is a picture the Saudi regime and their partners in FIFA do not want the world to see; where men from some of the poorest corners of the globe come to escape poverty only to find themselves kept in a stranglehold by debts, low pay and unpaid wages.
And yet, in a matter of weeks, FIFA is set to award the right to host the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia, the sole bidder for the tournament.
FIFA was sent a detailed breakdown of the allegations and asked what steps it would take to ensure the workers’ rights are protected, but it declined to comment, citing the on-going evaluation of the bids for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups.
The Saudi authorities did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The findings are, ‘deeply troubling but not surprising,’ said Karim Zidan, a fellow with the Human Rights Foundation, an organisation which has documented Saudi Arabia’s treatment of migrant workers for years. ‘Awarding the hosting rights of prestigious global events to authoritarian regimes without holding them to account on human rights only emboldens them to defy their obligations under international law,’ added Zidan.
Migrant workers – predominantly from Bangladesh – live in squalid rooms in a rundown corner of the city
Teams worked through the summer as temperatures topped 45 degrees in the gulf state
Workers at the stadium are employed by several different companies and sub-contractors
Workers at the stadium are employed by a number of different companies and sub-contractors, and under various terms. They may not all be subject to the conditions found in this investigation.
The majority interviewed are so-called ‘freelancers,’ who are hired by third-party labour supply companies, a common practice in the Gulf. They allege they have no contracts, no payslips and little job security. The only documentation is a timesheet recording the hours they have worked. Wages are paid in cash in return for a thumbprint, they say. They must buy their own insurance, find their own rooms and, each month, hand over around a week’s worth of wages to their Saudi sponsors to pay for their residence permit.
In almost 20 interviews, these workers expressed a deep sense of powerlessness and resignation, trapped between poverty in Bangladesh and exploitation in Saudi Arabia. Even the meagre wages they earn at the stadium are more than they can make at home, and so they carry on, not daring to speak up. ‘I will get no help if I complain to the company. They will threaten to kick me out. There are plenty of jobless workers here. I can easily be replaced,’ says one.
Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid is just one part of an unprecedented exercise in oil-fuelled nation-building, as the kingdom tries to diversify its economy and rebrand its image. Foreign workers already make up over three quarters of Saudi’s private-sector workforce, but these numbers are expected to soar as the construction boom drives demand for cheap labour, drawn from places like Pakistan, Nepal and in particular Bangladesh. These low-wage migrant workers build the infrastructure, but also serve in the restaurants, guard the hotels, sweep the streets and drive the taxis. Without them there would be no World Cup.
For some the decision to come to Saudi pays off – money is sent home, children are enrolled in better schools and new homes built – but for many it’s a bet they lose.
The abusive conditions endured by workers at the stadium are found all across Al Khobar and will touch visiting football fans wherever they go. Saudi’s World Cup bid sells the city as an unmissable tourist destination with a, ‘vibrant and contemporary waterfront.’ That is not how it looks to Sadiq. He says he spends around 12 hours each day traipsing up and down its tree-lined promenade sweeping up litter for just 650 rials (£130) a month. That works out around 40 pence an hour. Apart from two trips back to Bangladesh, he says he has not had a single day off in ten years. ‘My mother is very ill and I have two kids to educate. If I quit this work, I’ll be jobless, so there is no other way,’ he says.
Some locals seem to sense this injustice, and occasionally offer Sadiq and his colleagues a small tip or a bottle of cold water, but the problems facing many migrant workers are so severe and entrenched, no amount of charity can relieve them.
The Saudi authorities have taken some limited steps to improve conditions for migrant workers in recent years and months, including dismantling parts of the kafala – or sponsorship – system under which workers cannot leave their jobs without their employer’s permission. And yet, just as in Qatar, little changes on the ground.
Passports are confiscated, wages go unpaid, contracts turn out to be false. Trapped by debts, unable to change jobs and too afraid to complain, many find themselves in a kind of modern-day slavery. Others suffer a worse fate. Bangladeshis are dying in Saudi Arabia at a rate of over four a day, with the majority of these deaths going effectively unexplained.
The Saudi authorities have taken limited steps in a bid to improve conditions for workers
But the situation for those on the ground remains fraught with various injustices
The picture that emerges is of one of the wealthiest nations on earth exploiting some of its poorest workers as it gears up to host football’s greatest showcase.
The stadium in Al Khobar is being developed by Aramco, the state-owned oil giant and most profitable company in the world. Aramco recently became FIFA’s latest major sponsor in a deal one expert estimated could be worth at least $100 million a year by 2034.
FIFA is not the only one that appears to be cashing in. The Saudi arm of Clifford Chance, a global law firm with its headquarters in London, produced an ‘independent assessment’ of the human rights risks associated with hosting the World Cup in Saudi Arabia in support of the country’s bid. Rights groups called the report ‘shockingly poor’, saying it, ‘whitewashed’ the severe human rights abuses faced by both Saudi nationals and migrant workers.
One of the main stadium contractors is Six Construct, the Gulf subsidiary of the giant Belgian construction firm BESIX. Six Construct has form when it comes to workers’ rights abuses. Labourers working under the company at one of Qatar’s World Cup stadiums faced highly exploitative conditions, similar to those uncovered at Aramco Stadium, according to a 2016 Amnesty International report.
Although the stadium workers interviewed for this investigation are not employed directly by Six Construct, a vehicle with its markings was regularly parked on the road where they are picked up for their shifts, suggesting it is aware of their employment conditions.
Under UN principles, companies have an obligation to protect all workers, including those employed through sub-contractors, and must compensate them when their human rights are abused.
‘The main contractors in this situation cannot simply wash their hands of responsibility,’ said James Lynch, the co-director of human rights group FairSquare. ‘The kneejerk response would be to try to distance themselves from these workers by terminating the contractors in question – this would likely make things worse for the men affected. They need to engage with these workers’ situation, to ensure that they get a remedy for the exploitation they have suffered.’
Saudi’s World Cup bid promises to, ‘adopt a human rights-based approach to all third-party contracts and implement mandatory worker welfare standards,’ but the findings suggest it has failed at the first test. They will ramp up pressure on FIFA to explain how Saudi Arabia can comply with the human rights standards that host nations are required to meet. Amnesty International has warned that unless FIFA negotiates binding human rights agreements before a final decision is made, it would, ‘all but guarantee forced labour being at the heart of its flagship tournament.’
That prospect appears to already be a reality for men like Abdul. When he returns to his room after 10 hours at the stadium, his head is still fully wrapped in a cloth to ward off the scorching summer sun. Asked about the heat, he replies, ‘I came here to work, it’s not a relevant question.’
All that matters is the struggle to earn money, but four years after arriving from Bangladesh, he says he still owes almost half the £4500 he borrowed to pay a recruitment agent for his work visa in Saudi Arabia. That staggering sum is more than double what an average household earns in a year in rural Bangladesh.
The situation for workers eerily mirrors that seen prior to the 2022 tournament in Qatar
A 2016 Amnesty international report found workers at the Khalifa International Stadium suffered systematic abuses
He makes 13 rials an hour (£2.65) at the stadium, but after paying for his room, food, insurance, the fee for his residence permit and the latest instalment on his debt, he is left with a pittance.
Four months after starting work at the stadium, he says he has only received one month’s pay. ‘I feel bad about it, but there’s nothing I can do. There’s no one I can report this to because we don’t have a contract,’ he explains.
And so, he labours on. ‘I’m aware of the World Cup but I feel no excitement about it. I just have to do any job after leaving my country. I had to borrow so much money, if I go back home now there will be huge burden on me. It would have been better if I’d stayed in Bangladesh.’
In a statement, BESIX said it has, ‘made significant strides’ in protecting workers’ rights wherever it operates. Sub-contractors are required to comply with welfare standards that, ‘encompass the full spectrum of workers’ welfare, from safety and wages to living conditions.’ It acknowledged that, ‘some local contexts have proven challenging,’ and as a result it has already taken additional steps to improve the implementation of these standards. ‘Our priority is to ensure that all workers are treated with dignity and fairness,’ it said.
Aramco and Clifford Chance did not respond to a request for comment.
Names have been changed or omitted to protect workers.
