The legions of workers who built Dubai’s extravagant Expo 2020 site and keep it running face exploitation, grim conditions and a wide range of labor abuses, according to a new report released on Wednesday by a London-based labor rights group.
The report by consultancy Equidem also said that the United Arab Emirates government had failed to demonstrate that its commitments to worker welfare at the multibillion-dollar Expo had corrected, let alone identified, rights violations.
It comes after The Associated Press published an investigation based on interviews with over two dozen Expo workers about their grievances, including their payment of illegal recruitment fees, employers’ confiscation of passports and inadequate food. That article also drew on Equidem’s previous research into the conditions of construction workers a year before the world’s fair opened, when workers said they were denied wages for months amid the coronavirus outbreak.
