LOC02:41
23:41 GMT
DOHA, Dec 20 (KUNA) -- Qatar has fiercely rejected a report on migrant workers in the country by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
In response to claims that 7,000 people could die before the start of the Qatar-hosted 2022 World Cup, the Qatari government said that these were "attempts to distort the facts."
There has not been one work-related death amongst workers for the last 14 million hours of work at the World Cup construction sites, said the statement.
It is "illogical" to link all deaths, recorded in a nation that hosts over one million workers, to work-related incidents, it said.
"If the ITUC were to apply the same logic to the London 2012 Olympics, then the death of all non-British workers between 2006 and 2012 could be due to the construction of the London Olympics," added the statement.
The ITUC, for reasons that are unclear, continues to present these allegations as a fact, added the statement, despite these numbers being rejected on numerous times in the past.
Financial returns for workers in Qatar which are sent to their families back home every year are worth around USD 10 to 14 billion over the past five years, and most of these workers are treated fairly in Qatar, the statement said.
The statement went on to outline state reforms, which are still being revised, aimed at improving the livelihoods of workers, including obligatory measures to ensure the disbursement of wages on the appropriate deadline. Workers in private companies now receive their wages electronically within seven days.
Qatar has also applied laws that render illegal the withholding of foreign workers' passports and working at midday. It has also increased the size of their residences by 50 percent.
It has also put in place "tough regulations" to ensure the quality of social care provided to these workers, to ease their gaining of rights and for the application of justice where those who suffer from injustice and unjust treatment are concerned.
The government has also put into place an electronic complaints system that operates in 10 languages. (end)
nnd.sd