The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC), the highest body charged with the smooth conduct of the highly awaited FIFA World Cup football tournament in Qatar in 2022, announced that it has distributed thousands of state-of-the-art cooling vests to workers engaged in the construction of stadiums for the 2022 world football gala, the first to be hosted in the Arab region.
The special vests have been designed and developed in collaboration with the UK-based apparel experts TechNiche. The vest reduces a wearer’s body temperature by up to 15o C. Testing and development over the past year have shown the vests improve a wearer’s comfort, concentration and the ability to work efficiently in hot conditions, the SC has said.
“The cooling vest has the potential to transform the lives of our workers. We have spent two years exploring how best to utilise various cooling products, but many are simply not suitable for Qatar’s environment. We want our workers to really benefit from the concept of this technology and after putting the TechNiche products through rigorous testing, they delivered impressive results,” said Mahmoud Qutub, Executive Director of the SC’s Workers Welfare Department.
The vests are expected to provide much needed comfort to the workers in the peak summer heat as they can stay cool for up to eight hours.
Ever since Qatar won the bid to host the prestigious event, its detractors have been relentless in making a hue and cry against giving the rights to Qatar. They were constantly cooking up stories about anything and everything and using some international media, they were trying to malign Qatar by levelling unfounded allegations about Qatar’s treatment of its guest workers and their rights.
But the country remained calm and gradually emerged as the best place for workers by taking extra measures for the welfare and protection of its workforce.
The cooling vest is the latest example of how the country strives to make its workers comfortable and keep them healthy.
With the hosting of 2022 World Cup, Qatar not only hopes to present the best-ever football tournament, but also intends to make its legacies linger for a long time. It is with a purpose that the word ‘legacy’ is included in the supreme panel’s name.
Several stadiums are being built in such a way that after the tournament they can be shifted in whole or in part to other less developed countries and contribute to the future of football and other sports in those countries, thus leaving a lasting legacy.
Nobody should have any doubt that Qatar 2022 will be a model for the future hosts to follow and the legacy it leaves will last for ages to come not only in Qatar, but in countries across the world.
