The reaction was quick. The day after the broadcast by France Television of images noting the deplorable living conditions of workers in Qatar, the French Football Federation (FFF) initially announced the forthcoming dispatch of a mission. It will finally be next Tuesday in Doha, as announced by the federal body in a press release on Friday.
The delegation will be made up of Philippe Diallo, Vice-President of the FFF, Florence Hardouin, General Manager, and Erwan le Prevost, Director of Institutional and International Relations. “This mission, carried out in conjunction with Fifa, the World Cup organizing committee and the French authorities in Doha, will stay in Doha for the time necessary to ensure that the specifications presented are respected”, specifies by elsewhere the federation.
Still according to the latter, “this mission aims to verify that the hotel of the French team and its service companies respect their commitments to respect the social rights of the employees who will intervene on the base camp during the competition (payment of the salary, overtime, decent housing conditions, rest days, end of Kafala…). The FFF also recalls in the press release that it is “also committed, like other European nations, to defending the projects to create a reception center and a workers’ compensation fund. »
Already implicated for various reasons, including suspicions of harassment, Noël Le Graët, the president of the FFF, has in “Complement of the investigation” delivered his personal reaction to the images of cramped rooms infested with cockroaches in which the workers live. : “It’s not insoluble that, it’s strokes of paint. There’s still time to fix that. “Words that did not leave indifferent Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the Minister of Sports, who said she was” shocked “.