The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), the organisation responsible for delivering the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has confirmed the first death due to Covid-19 among its workforce engaged in various World Cup-related projects.
The victim was a 51-year-old specialist engineer who was employed by one of SC's contractors who had been working in the projects since 2019.
"Sadly, on June 11, 2020, a 51-year-old specialist engineer employed by the contractor Conspel, tragically died after contracting COVID-19," a statement from SC read.
"He had worked on Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy projects since October 2019 and had no underlying health issues. We send our deepest condolences to his family and friends."
The Coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc throughout the world and SC confirmed the first cases of the infection among its workforce back in April. Along with the announcement, the SC had also laid down the list of preventive measures they had taken to ensure the spread is contained.
Various mitigation measures had been adopted by the SC including distribution of masks and sanitisers across all the World Cup project sites. The SC established quarantine and isolation facilities in all the sites. A process to check and monitor the body temperature of workers twice a day was implemented.
This is in addition to various awareness classes and campaigns run to ensure the workers are well abreast of the issue and know how to safeguard themselves.
SC also initiated a risk assessment review of their existing caterers' kitchen facilities and suggested upgrades to a few and identified those that needed replacement to maintain hygiene in order to mitigate the crisis.
The organisers have also mentioned that the work at the World Cup sites had slowed down due to the pandemic and the preventive measures it had undertaken. But since 80 per cent of the work had alerady been completed they don't expect any slowdown in terms of completing the projects. The work is on time.
Just two weeks back, SC had unveiled the Education Cuty stadium after a digital launch.
