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by Our Sports Desk
Russian authorities were keen to use prison labour to drive down the costs of holding the 2018 World Cup yesterday.
The Russian prison service is backing a bid by Alexander Khinshtein, a lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party, to allow prisoners to be taken from their camps to work at factories, with a focus on driving down the costs of building materials for World Cup projects.
“It’ll help in the sense that there will be the opportunity to acquire building materials for a lower price, lower than there is currently on the market,” Khinshtein said. “And apart from that it’ll make it possible to get prisoners into work, which is very positive.”
Russian prison labour schemes have faced allegations that prisoners are routinely underpaid or forced to work long hours.
The workers would continue to live in their prison camps and would be transported to their place of work each day. A typical wage for a prisoner on such projects might be 15,000 rubles (£193.81) a month, Khinshtein said.
Workers’ rights is a huge issue surrounding World Cup organiser Fifa, which is under pressure over continued exploitation and deaths among migrant workers in 2022 host nation Qatar.
