The US GDP is about 40x that of Qatar, and it has fewer than a thousand construction fatalities a year. So construction deaths are depressingly regular, but they’re massively out of scale for Qatar.
I do agree that it’s a generic number, and not tied to the WC (despite being read by a lot of people as such). Fortunately Qatar has supplied the actual number of WC-related deaths: none! I feel much better.
Completely agree. My point was that you don’t have to bribe all the FIFA members to get a favorable site vote.
The number is all deaths amongst migrant workers, not just those working on WC projects (which incidentally have not started building yet for the most part, 7 years to go after all). They have also counted deaths from non work related injuries, such a road accidents and illness, such as cancer and heart attacks.
Moreever, the number of migrants is over half a million, and 1200 is actually lower then what you would expect amongst a group of that size in a five year period.
So yeah, its so obviously wrong and misleading, that I still suspect that they must have planted it to discredit their opponents.
I think there’s room for optimism. It’s not impossible for rotten organizations to clean up, especially when there’s change at the very top.
Off the top of my head:
Sack lots of people. Including platini if FIFA president can do that.
Hand over all paperwork to the police, even if it means implicating everyone down to the janitor.
Create an independent branch that will investigate corruption and report to the police. Include mechanism for anonymous / safe whistleblowing.
Limited number of terms for FIFA president.
Kick off an evaluation of alternative voting mechanisms. This is a tricky one as you would basically need lots of small countries to vote on bringing in a voting system against their best interests. But an open and transparent evaluation might find a system that everyone can get behind.