70 Nepalese workers died in 2022 World Cup preparations in Qatar since 2012: Report

70 Nepalese builders working in the preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar have died in construction sites since the start of 2012, according to a death toll announced by Nepal government representatives in Doha.

The death toll figures, which are the clearest official data yet on the dangers facing 1.2 million migrant workers in Qatar during the 100 billion-dollar construction drive before the 2022 World Cup, also revealed that 15 of those workers have died this year.

According to The Guardian, trade union leaders in Nepal claimed that many of the fatalities were caused by workers without proper safety equipment falling from the upper floors of buildings.

Citing data from the Nepal embassy in Qatar, a legal adviser working for Nepali nationals in the Gulf kingdom said that 20 percent of the 276 Nepalis who died in the country last year were killed on building sites, while the rest died of natural causes and in accidents not at the workplace.

Sources also said that 151 Nepalese workers have died, one in 10 on building sites, this year, adding that workers had also been killed walking on Doha's congested roads and from heat exhaustion and dehydration.

However, the Qatar government has denied the reports about brutal working conditions, long hours, lack of food and pay and squalid living quarters facing Nepalese workers, with Qatar's national human rights committee claiming that the information was false and the numbers exaggerated.