Failure to prevent deaths

Relatives and villagers gather around the coffin of Balkisun Mandal Khatwe at Belhi village, Saptari district of Nepal. Balkisun, who had been working with his employer in Qatar for less than a month, died in his sleep. © Narendra Shrestha/EPA/Shutterstock

Sujan Miah was just 32 years old when workmates found him unresponsive in bed on the morning of 24 September 2020. He was a pipe fitter on a project in the desert and had been working in temperatures that exceeded 40°C in the four days before he died. Manjur Kha Pathan was 40 and had been working 12 to 13 hours a day as a truck driver. The air conditioning in his cabin was faulty. He collapsed in his accommodation on 9 February 2021 and died before the ambulance arrived. He was married with four children.

The emotional and economic impact on the families has been devastating. “Now everything is shattered,” said Bhumisara, the wife of Yam Bahadur Rana. “Life itself has become like a broken mirror.” She told Amnesty International that since she was widowed, she and her two children have had to survive on 2,000 Nepali rupees (approximately US$16) a month provided by the Nepali government. Bipana, the wife of Tul Bahadur Gharti, said, “I have cried many times in emotion. Being alone is very difficult… My husband was set on fire. I feel like I’m burning in oil.”142

The available evidence shows that Qatar’s extreme climate could play a role in a significant number of these deaths, particularly in light of the absence of adequate mitigating measures.143 In an effort to address this issue, the Qatari authorities introduced in May 2021 new legislation on heat protection, with a range of measures. These include an extension of the summer working hours restriction by four weeks, granting workers the right to “self-pace” by taking breaks when needed, and a maximum temperature in the workplace above which all work is prohibited – a wet-bulb globe temperature (which takes into consideration the ambient temperature, humidity, solar radiation and wind speed) of 32.1°C.

142 Interview conducted with the family of Tul Bahadur Gharti 23 March 2021 in Nepal, for more information about his case see Amnesty International, In the Prime of their lives: Qatar’s failure to investigate, remedy and prevent migrant workers’ deaths, p:41. 143 The Guardian, Revealed: hundreds of migrant workers dying of heat stress in Qatar each year, 2 October 2019.