For first time, Dubai Expo 2020 says 5 workers died on site

Dubai’s Expo 2020 has acknowledged that five workers had been killed on site during construction of the massive world’s fair, revealing for the first time overall statistics for worker fatalities

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Dubai’s Expo 2020 on Saturday acknowledged that five workers had been killed on site during construction of the massive world’s fair, revealing for the first time overall statistics for worker fatalities.

Expo previously said that its 200,000 laborers who built the site worked some 240 million hours in its construction. It had not offered any overall statistics previously on worker fatalities, injuries or coronavirus infections despite repeated requests from The Associated Press and other journalists.

The admission comes after the European Parliament last month urged nations not to take part in Expo, citing the United Arab Emirates' “inhumane practices against foreign workers” that it said worsened during the pandemic. Ahead of Expo, businesses and construction companies are “coercing workers into signing untranslated documents, confiscating their passports, exposing them to extreme working hours in unsafe weather conditions and providing them with unsanitary housing,” the resolution said.

At a press conference a day after the event’s opening, Expo spokesperson Sconaid McGeachin said the information about fatalities was previously available to journalists and referred reporters to a press release about a monument honoring the laborers who built the site from scratch, which offered no additional details. She said authorities would offer more information about casualties at a later, unspecified time.