Indian workers suffer ‘slumdog’ conditions in rush to hit Commonwealth Games target

Indian migrant labourers rushing to finish buildings for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in October are living and working in “rock-bottom” conditions that violate Indian laws, according to a panel set up by an Indian court.

The committee has filed a report accusing government-appointed companies of denying minimum wages, adequate accommodation, basic equipment and medical care to many of the 17,000 workers on the Games sites.

“They’re in such a hurry to finish that they’re cutting corners where they shouldn’t,” said Arundhati Ghose, a former Indian Ambassador to the United Nations, and one of the five panel members.

“This could have been an occasion to show the rest of the country how to do things, but they haven’t,” she told The Times. “You can’t be proud if you treat the people who built the venues so badly.”

She called for an immediate investigation into reports that 43 workers had died — compared with 6 reported fatalities during preparation for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. “We didn’t have enough time to look into that,” she said, adding that the panel had inspected ten venues in one month.
She also called for contractors responsible for the worst violations to be fined or jailed, citing cases where there were only four lavatories for 150 workers.

“We did a lot of shrieking, it’s just outrageous,” she said.

The Delhi High Court appointed the panel in January in response to a public interest lawsuit filed by a non-governmental organisation called the People’s Union For Democratic Rights.

The panel’s official report described the overall situation as “rather tragic” and workplaces as “extremely unclean, unhygienic and unsafe”.

Mike Hooper, chief executive of the London-based Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), which owns and controls the Games, said that he backed the panel’s recommendations. “There is no excuse for operators or contractors to circumvent the laws of India,” he told The Times.

The report is the latest embarrassment for Indian authorities as they race to complete preparations for the country’s biggest international sporting event since the Asian Games in Delhi in 1982. There have been widespread allegations in the media that contractors were cutting corners by employing child workers on the sites.

India had hoped to showcase its economic progress over the past two decades and began a series of important infrastructure projects in Delhi, including a new airport and a metro extension. But with three months until monsoon rains slow work further, the main stadium is still a building site, the swimming complex a pile of rubble and the metro extension behind schedule.

Indian organisers continue to insist that everything will be finished on time and the Games will be the “best ever”. Suresh Kalmadi, the Games Organising Committee chairman, has compared the process to an Indian wedding in which everything comes together at the last minute.

But the CGF expressed concern last week, saying that venues needed to be tested two months before the event. Michael Fennell, the CGF president, told reporters in Delhi: “There remains quite a high level of concern about some venues being completed in time so that proper test events can be held. There is a lot of work still to be done.”