FACT CHECKER

Ian Dale, Olympics, prostitution

Okay, amidst some heated discussion and re-checking of facts, I now wish to revise the figure of one million construction workers that I put out last week. As it is wrong.

fact-checking-hillary

A cartoon borrowed from a far more famous female politician

I misread the the information given to me by a charity, which I published on Sunday, partly as the press release was written in India where the commas are placed differently to the UK. The figure ‘1,00,000’ or 100,000 in UK terms was quoted by the Press Trust of India last year and widely used by AIDS and sexual health pressure groups as the number of construction workers due to work on the London 2012 Olympic sites over the next four years.

However, since Ian Dale’s blog I have called around these original sources (taking rather a long time to track down where the Indian Press Agency got their numbers from) and got a number of different figures.

Following these discussions, I now take the view that the Olympic Delivery Authority is the most informed body on this figure. Well, they are the company that is dishing out the contracts! Their figure is a far more conservative 30,000 construction workers over the next four years.

So yes, Ian, I didn’t get my facts right. Something I will be more careful about in future. As is the quicky nature of a blog,  I don’t perhaps check my figures as strenously as I would a comment piece for a paper. And I actually appreciate being pulled up on it by a wide community of interested readers when I don’t. So thank you and that’s 30,000 not one million. Still, rather a big number….

8 thoughts on “FACT CHECKER”

  2. I hope that as a London MEP and a former CVS head working in Stratford that you get the chance to attend the site when it is finished.

    The Games themselves begin in almost exactly three years time and I hope that they are a great success.

    Time to move on after this storm in a teacup!

  3. OK, Mary, now we’ve a figure for construction workers, maybe you can tell me what inquiries have been made to discover whether any of the construction workers have been trafficked?

    I ask in all seriousness, having read a recent paper by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women on trafficking and the forthcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

    I quote: “While the majority of attention is placed on trafficking for sexual exploitation, other more realistic concerns regarding trafficking and exploitation have been raised during recent Olympic Games in 2004 and 2008.

    “One was the PlayFair campaign, an international effort by unions, NGOs and labour groups to draw
    attention to inhuman working conditions in the world sportswear sector. It was launched prior to the 2004
    Athens Olympics and aimed “to pressure sportswear and athletic footwear companies, the International
    Olympics Committee … as well as national governments, into taking identifiable and concrete measures to eliminate the exploitation and abuse of the mostly women workers in the global sporting goods industry.
    This campaign continued for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

    “Another concern raised prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics was in relation to the exploitation of construction workers – largely migrants – who were working on sports venues prior to the games. The Chinese government admitted that six workers had been killed in workplace accidents at Olympic venues. While this is largely related to labour conditions and labour rights in China, it is also connected with conditions formed by hosting the Olympics games – a sudden need for specific sports venues and housing for athletes within a limited time period which may lead to extended working hours and an increase in risk for workers.

    While neither of these two situations directly address trafficking, they both highlight highly exploitative labour
    conditions and sectors that frequently rely on migrant workers, which increases the risk for trafficking cases.
    Improving and regulating working conditions will also decrease the likelihood of trafficking for labour
    exploitation, which many see as the greatest link between trafficking in persons and sporting events.”

    http://bccec.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/gaatw_2010olympics1.pdf

  6. Good to own up to it… I still wonder about your judgment though in thinking that 1m could be at all likely.

  7. Ed Moran – Why, thank you, Ed! At the moment I’m planning a blog on this issue, so I have links coming out of my ears. Keep an eye out on my blog, I should have something up by the end of the weekend.

    S

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