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A subway station under construction as part of preparations for the 2022 World Football Cup, April 11, 2019, in Doha, Qatar. Amer Ghazzal / Barcroft Media via Getty Images

At the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar, high temperatures led to a series of failures among athletes. In this context, voices are raised to recall that hundreds of thousands of foreign workers are employed on construction sites in extreme working conditions while the small emirate is currently building the infrastructure of the 2022 World Cup football.

Over 30 degrees and 70% humidity in Doha in recent days for World Athletics. But the thermometer sometimes shows 45 degrees in Qatar. A country where the majority of the 2 million inhabitants are Asian workers, particularly on construction sites, as recalled by Hiba Zayadin of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

" We have seen marathoners collapse due to the extreme heat and humidity conditions, this should remind us that foreign workers are working 12 hours a day under the same conditions and even worse. And the only rudimentary protection they enjoy is a ban on summer work between 11:30 in the morning and 15:00 in the afternoon, but this only applies to the hottest months of the year. "

For its part, the British newspaper The Guardian publishes a scientific study according to which the heat kills hundreds of foreign workers every year on the building sites in Qatar, but for the emirate it is officially "natural deaths".

See also: Qatar 2022: Amnesty International highlights the exploitation of foreign workers