Progress Pains
As Saudi Arabia pushes ever forward with its massive and unprecedented construction projects, the death toll has reportedly been staggering.
In a new documentary from the United Kingdom’s Channel 3, this dirty big secret is aired as a female journalist goes undercover there to learn the Saudis’ secrets.
In the process of her reporting, the anonymous reporter discovers an extremely inconvenient truth: during the course of its multitrillion-dollar Vision 2030 project — which was launched in 2017 and includes its in-progress [right?] 100-mile skyscraper called “The Line” within its futuristic NEOM development — more than 21,000 foreign workers on it have died.
The majority of the people who have died while working on Vision 2030 come from South Asian countries like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal — and those who are still alive told the anonymous undercover reporter in stark terms how horrendous their work conditions are.
Despite some half-baked attempts at labor reform, migrant workers in Saudi Arabia are subjected to extreme exploitation that borders on slavery. Indeed, during the documentary, some of the workers tasked with building trenches and railway tunnels in NEOM said they are “treated like beggars” and forced to work 16-hour days.
“There is little time to rest,” the worker said. “We get tired. We suffer from anxiety day and night.”
Accidents Happen
It’s unsurprising that under such conditions — exacerbated by the Saudis’ bid to host the World Cup in 2034 in a soccer stadium that hasn’t yet been built — accidents are common. Given the uber-secretive nature of the kingdom, however, it’s impossible to know the true extent of how many injuries and casualties have occurred.
News of NEOM’s gruesome death toll follows prior reporting about the tens of thousands of indigenous people who have been forcibly removed to make way for the 100-mile-long city. As the BBC revealed earlier this year, Saudi officials were instructed to kill any non-compliant members of the Huwaitat tribe who inhabited the desert region.
When The Guardian asked NEOM about the claims made in the Channel 3 documentary, a representative said the project is “assessing the claims made in this [program] and, where required, will take appropriate action.”
“We require all contractors and subcontractors to comply with NEOM’s code of conduct,” the representative continued, “based on the laws of Saudi Arabia.”
It’s a reminder of the nightmarish reality experienced by laborers in the Saudi kingdom — and that we get much of our planet-killing fossil fuels from a monarchy that values profits over people to such an extreme degree.
More on chilling labor stats: That AI You’re Using Was Trained By Slave Labor, Basically
