Build Magazine July 2015

Build Magazine 22 he new timeline, created by the DAM law firm comes to the fright- ening conclusion that the deaths in Qatar are low in comparison to many historical projects, with the construc- tion of the Panama Canal proving to be the most dangerous major construction project of all time, with 408.12 deaths for every 1,000 workers, according to the timeline. In comparison, the Qatar project had just 2.86 per thousand workers. However, this is still a phenomenal figure when the technolog- ical advancements since the Panama Canal construction are taken in consideration. John Michael Montevideo states that after finishing the timeline, he wanted to take it a step further and used some data from the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics to calculate a death rate for the entire United States and then compare it to the massive World Cup construction projects going on right now in Qatar. In 2013, the United States workforce stood at 143.94 million with 4,585 work related deaths that year, yielding a death rate of 3.2 per every 100 thousand workers. He then used the most accurate estimates of the World Cup construction projects in Qatar, finding that 1.4 million workers are expected to be used with 4,000 expected fatal- ities, the death rate for the World Cup construction shoots up to 285.71 per 100 thousand. He found these results shocking and surprising. “Since Qatar is the richest country in the World, in terms of overall GDP, I was surprised at how drastic the death rate numbers look for an advanced county when compared to other more modern projects in today’s day-in-age. It really makes you wonder about how we, as a global community, protect the value of human life as compared to soccer, for example.” The Qatari government has stren- uously denied the allegations and stated that no one has died during the construction of the stadium, which is still in its early stages. The statement cites the Washington Post’s article on the deaths as the source of the claims. “In preparing its report, it appears that the Post simply took the total annual mortality figures for Indian and Nepalese migrants working in Qatar and multiplied those numbers by the years remaining between now and the 2022 World Cup – a calculation which assumes that the death of every migrant worker in Qatar is work related.” Dying for Construction Death toll for Qatar World Cup stadium is surprisingly low according to new timeline of death rates at major construction projects, but with current death rates estimated at around 2000 for the stadium project, why are workers perishing despite vast financial cost of the project? T