The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) has appointed Impactt Ltd as an independent third-party to ensure the welfare of workers on projects related to FIFA 2022 World Cup.
As an External Monitor, the entity has been hired by SC to further strengthen the inspections process of the SC Workers’ Welfare Standards (WW Standards), a set of enforceable principles and regulations which are included into all Qatar 2022 contracts.
Published on March 1, the second edition of the WW Standards clearly outlines the SC’s criteria regarding the recruitment, employment, living and working conditions of everyone engaged on an SC project.
With two years’ experience of applying the WW Standards in consultation with contractors and sub-contractors, the WWU presents a number of changes in Edition Two, which seek to bolster regulations on auditing and inspections, as well as ethical recruitment.
These reviewed standards are now in the process of being further entrenched all through the supply chain in a series of workshops with contractors and sub-contractors.
In addition to many visits by non-government organisations to SC projects, the WWU and senior SC management led a two-day trip to London in January 2016 to brief Amnesty International, Engineers Against Poverty, Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), Humanity United and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the updated standards, progress to date, and to obtain input and feedback from these organisations.
Commenting on the appointment of Impactt Ltd, SC Secretary General, Hassan Al Thawadi, said: “In line with our continued commitment to making tangible progress on workers’ welfare, this appointment of an independent third party external monitor is an important step for us.
“We will keep improving on every step of our journey as we make sure our approach to workers’ welfare progress is transparent and our updated standards are effectively and stringently enforced throughout the entire supply chain and life cycle of our projects.”
As part of its all-inclusive approach to workers’ welfare, the SC’s WWU has been working diligently with NGOs from around the world to fast-track positive enterprises already in progress in Qatar, with the help of additional expertise.
One of these NGOs was the internationally-recognised organisation Verité, which has worked with the SC since early this year to help appoint the external monitor.
“In January this year, Verité was commissioned by the SC to develop the technical scope of services for the appointment of an independent external monitor to assess compliance with the Worker’s Welfare Standards on all SC projects,” said Dan Viederman, CEO of Verité.
The scope requires the external monitor to continuously review and assess the extent to which SC contractors and sub-contractors – including their recruitment agents – and the SC itself are in compliance with the Standards.
“We also assisted the SC in identifying potential tenderers and the technical evaluation of tenderers for the external monitor role,” he said.
The addition of the independent third party will mean independent audits of the SC and its contractors take place on a regular basis, completing the four-tier auditing process.
“Our approach is to put workers at the centre of everything we do, as we work to understand how and why labour standards abuses occur, to support remediation for any individual whose rights have been infringed and to build systems and practices to support decent jobs for workers now and in the future,” said Rosey Hurst, Director of Impactt.
“We are looking forward to applying these principles with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy when our engagement begins.”
The SC has maintained an open dialogue with stakeholders including governments of labour sending countries and international NGOs in this regard.
Other changes introduced in Edition Two of the WW Standards include:
1. Inserting a requirement for Contractors to pay all workers in accordance with the Wage Protection System (WPS), introduced by Law No. 1 of 2015 in November 2015;
2. Inserting a requirement for the appointment of a Project Worker Welfare Officer once the number of workers on-site exceeds 500 workers to look after site welfare matters;
3. Inserting a mechanism for companies not working on SC projects to voluntarily adopt the WW Standards and come under the auditing & compliance regime and support systems of the SC.
Additional planned improvements in 2016 include:
1. Further developing a bespoke online IT platform auditing tool which was recently launched, enabling the SC and its contractors to generate more accurate, streamlined and immediate insights into the implementation of the WW Standards;
2. Commencing operations of the SC Workers’ Skills Training Centre and
3. Hiring additional inspectors to account for growing demand and to ensure that the team is able to deliver and implement rectification plans for all issues, the press statement issued by SC said.
