Those of you who watched the recent World Cup couldn’t help noticing the pitch side advertising for a company called Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest fossil fuel company in the world. Now a new report by Fairsquare has exposed just how dire the working conditions for migrant workers at Aramco really are.
As the climate crisis worsens, it was reported on 10 September that Saudi Aramco is looking to develop one of the world’s largest gas fields, the Jafurah gas field, at a cost of $110 billion.
It was also noted that it is expected that the field will have approximately two billion standard cubic feet per day of sales by 2030. This would make Saudi Arabia the world’s third largest producer of natural gas by the end of the 2020s.
It was noted that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Aramco, and also the chair of Newcastle United, had commented that the development of the Jafurah field was expected to support Saudi Arabia’s leading position in the global energy sector. It would also consolidate Saudi Aramco’s position in the global energy sector.
Saudi Aramco
According to its own website, Saudi Aramco has 93 years’ experience in the field of fossil fuel extraction, has 247.2 billion tons of reserves and employs a total workforce of over 76 000. However, what the website does not tell us, is how the workforce are treated.
“Blood, sweat and oil”: new FairSquare report
A new report by FairSquare exposes serious abuses of migrant workers within the supply chain of Saudi Aramco. Aramco is Saudi Arabia’s national oil company and the biggest fossil fuel company in the world.
The new report makes it clear that migrant workers, who work for Aramco are subject to excessive working hours, exposed to extreme heat, rarely receive compensation following fatalities and injuries and forced to reside in slum housing.
The report by FairSquare’s is based on interviews with 27 individuals including colleagues and relatives of deceased workers and former and current workers.
Among the findings of the report are these revelations:
Workers live in container housing and get electric shocks when it rains.
Workers are given poor food compared to what animals eat.
Inadequate compensation is being paid to the families of workers who are killed or to workers who sustain life-changing injuries. Indeed, the wife of a worker who became paralysed after collapsing at work and received no compensation told researchers:
“I have no-one, I have nothing… I don’t know the reasons why [the company didn’t provide compensation]. But they should have. If a worker becomes sick at my home, I should be responsible.”
A number of men who worked as fuel tank drivers said that they worked excessively long hours without breaks, creating the risk of road accidents.
A large number of workers commented that they were being exposed to extreme temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius and said that they could remember witnessing colleagues collapsing and fainting while working as a result of the heat.
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Nick McGeehan
FairSquare director Nick McGeehan commented: “Aramco is the commercial engine of Saudi Arabia and it has both responsibility and influence to protect the workers upon whom it depends. These findings should once again raise serious concerns about FIFA’s increasingly close relationship not just with Aramco, but with Saudi Arabia more generally.”
This should concern us all
Saudi Aramco is the world’s biggest oil company and as such is at the forefront of the continuing worsening of the climate crisis.
It is clear from this report that despite being a fabulously wealthy company they are exploiting migrant labour in Saudi Arabia at a colossal scale.
This is an issue which the Saudi government should be addressing effectively, but is not doing so. We are talking here about human dignity and how we treat our fellow humans and as such this is also an issue that should concern us all, especially here in the North East, with our close links to the regime in Riyadh.
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