Low-wage workers have paid dearly for Qatar’s glittering World Cup

As some of the biggest names in football gather in Doha for today’s World Cup draw, commentators will no doubt point out how much money Qatar has lavished on its preparations for the sporting mega-event.

They will talk of its vast, gas-fuelled wealth and the $500m (£380m) a week it was at one stage spending on new stadiums, transport links and infrastructure.

But despite the billions spent, Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure has been built on the cheap. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been forced to pay for their own recruitment and labour for years earning poverty wages.

In villages and towns across south Asia and parts of Africa, young men desperate for work sign up with recruitment agents who, often in collusion with companies or brokers in Qatar, illegally extract huge sums from them in return for a job. It can take a low-wage worker from Bangladesh a year of hard labour just to recoup the fees.

For some the bargain eventually pays off; money is sent home, houses are rebuilt, children sent to better schools and marriage dowries paid. Many workers return to Qatar multiple times, a sign perhaps of a lack of opportunities at home, but also that migration can work.

But for many others, it’s a trap. They find themselves deep in debt, unable to change jobs and on very low wages.

In 2014 I met a worker building the Al Janoub stadium who was earning overtime pay of 45p an hour. In 2016, Amnesty International found scores of workers maintaining the green spaces around the Khalifa stadium earning a basic salary of about 50p an hour. Two years later, the Guardian interviewed a worker at Al Rayyan stadium earning about 60p an hour. And last year I met dozens of workers employed at Fifa-endorsed hotels, earning a basic wage