Saudi Arabia’s minister of sport, Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal, said an investigation was underway into the death of a worker at the construction site of a stadium at the 2034 World Cup and claimed local officials were taking the issue “seriously” amid concerns about laborers’ rights in the gulf nation.
Muhammad Arshad, a foreman from Pakistan in his mid-30s, died on March 12 at the site of Aramco Stadium in Al Khobar, per The Guardian. Arshad fell to his death from an upper level of the construction site and his is the first-known death associated with the construction of the 2034 World Cup that will be hosted in Saudi Arabia. The nation officially won the hosting rights in December, but FIFA’s unconventional decision in October 2023 meant Saudi Arabia were the de facto hosts long before the formal announcement.
“Every incident we take seriously, we file an investigation, we look at what went wrong,” Al-Faisal said Sunday before Formula One’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, per ESPN. “Unfortunately, in construction, these things happen. We don’t want them to happen … As soon as it was highlighted, we filed an investigation, we checked what is happening, we make sure that they put the right system in and make sure that it doesn’t happen again at Aramco Stadium. And we supervise it with the contractors and so on to make sure that they deliver on these things to make sure that we deliver on our commitment, as well, to the world.”
Human rights groups have been critical of FIFA’s decision to award Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup hosting rights to Saudi Arabia, especially as it pertains to the impact of the construction projects on the migrant workers who will work there and the locals who will be impacted by them.
“Today, there is no shortage of evidence of migrant workers being exploited and subjected to racism, activists sentenced to decades in prison for expressing themselves peacefully, women and LGBTI people facing legalized discrimination, or residents forcibly evicted to make way for state projects,” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, said in a joint statement in December. “It is evident that without urgent action and comprehensive reforms, the 2034 World Cup will be tarnished by repression, discrimination and exploitation on a massive scale.”
In Arshad’s case, there are concerns that his employer, Belgian construction company Besix Group, has not followed Saudi law since his death. In the days after his death, Arshad’s family – which includes his three young sons, aged between two and seven – had not received compensation, as is required by law. There are also reports that workers at the Aramco Stadium were ordered to delete videos and images associated with Arshad’s death and told not to speak about it.
“We have just fallen from the sky to the ground. The whole family is in a state of shock,” Arshad’s father Muhammad Bashir told The Guardian last month. “It will have a long-lasting impact on their lives. Arshad’s income was their only source of living. We will have to bear their living and educational expenses. We will try to meet their needs.”
The concern about working conditions in Saudi Arabia comes shortly after the 2022 World Cup hosted in Qatar, where several migrant workers died while constructing stadiums. Though local officials said only three workers died in work-related accidents and 37 others died in non-work-related incidents, the count could be significantly higher. In February 2021, The Guardian estimated that more than 6,500 workers died while building Qatar’s World Cup stadiums, though the exact figure remains unclear.
Al-Faisal claims officials in his country have learned the lessons from the World Cup in Qatar.
“We’ve learned from that, Al-Faisal said. “We met with the Qataris, what they’ve been through, what they’ve gone through. We have ongoing communication with them, with FIFA, as well, on what needs to be done, how do we make sure that workers’ safety is a highest priority. And it’s a mandate on us, and it’s one of the most important things on us because we saw the impact that it had on Qatar.”
FIFA has not commented on Arshad’s death at this time.