DAILY STAR
On paper, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vision for Saudi Arabia looks like a futuristic dream.
But in reality, 21,000 workers have died in the last eight years trying to make the vision happen.
An ITV undercover documentary highlights migrant workers’ stories revealing gruelling conditions, unpaid wages and claims of abuse of human rights.
Some said they feel “trapped like slaves” and treated like “beggars” working 16-hour days for 14 days straight on a multi-billion pound Neom project which includes The Line – a 170km-long linear city, which reportedly has a 140,000-strong migrant workforce.
On top of long shifts, workers claim they must take an unpaid three-hour bus commute to get to the desert site and back which leaves them with around four hours to sleep, Middle East Eye reports.
“We’re made to work extremely hard. There is little time to rest. We get tired. We suffer from anxiety day and night,” one worker said.
“Saudi doesn’t care much for citizens from other countries. We are treated like beggars.”
The documentary called Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia delves into the “dangerous” conditions many have faced.
It also looks into the alleged illegal practices and serious violations behind some of the world’s most expensive building projects.
Mohammed bin Salman, a prominent figure in the Kingdom has been leading efforts to transform the oil state into a global tourism hub.
He has invested trillions in his Saudi Vision 2030 project which includes ambitious developments like Neom.
But the large scale construction projects have led to growing concerns that migrant labourers may be exploited. Reports suggest as many as 100,000 have vanished during the construction of Neom, Hindustan Times reports.
The urban development project was launched in 2017 and is located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, directly east of Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba and south of Jordan.
But new figures from ITV indicate that 21,000 foreign workers from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal have died since the launch of vision 2030, while Nepal’s foreign employment board has reported that the deaths of over 650 Nepalese workers remain unexplained.
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