Security guards line up outside the Stadium 974 in Doha in November prior to the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Photograph: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images

Low-wage migrant workers who made the tournament possible now find themselves broke and homeless or even deported or imprisoned

Six months on from that most memorable of World Cup finals, Shakir Ullah has been forgotten. Ullah, from Pakistan, spent the tournament employed as a security guard but has now been in jail in Qatar for almost five months. He was detained in late January as he tried to resolve a dispute over unpaid wages on behalf of hundreds of his co-workers. The men were deployed to guard key sites during the World Cup but were suddenly laid off in the days after the final, with about three months on their contracts.

The abrupt termination – in breach of Qatar’s labour law – left them homeless, jobless and in many cases, deep in debt. On that day, about 250 of them were detained and later deported. Ullah and two others were arrested and remain in prison. He has allegedly been sentenced to six months and fined 10,000 rials (£2,170); more than he made in the three months he worked at the World Cup. His appeal against the sentence was recently rejected. One source told the Observer that if he fails to pay the fine, his detention may be extended.

In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Ullah’s wife and five children are in a desperate state. A relative said: “Shakir’s family is in real trouble. His wife is worried at every step.”

For years, Qatar and Fifa insisted things had changed for men such as Ullah and the hundreds of thousands of low-wage migrant workers who made the tournament possible. The World Cup would leave a lasting legacy of better workers’ rights in the country and the region, they claimed.

Today, those promises sound empty and instead of outrage that these men were cheated and deported or imprisoned, there is only silence. Fifa, which earned $7.5bn in the four-year cycle up to the World Cup, has nothing to say, despite knowing about the case for months. The Qatari government’s communications office, which usually provides a prompt and comprehensive reply, has failed to respond to repeated requests for comment on the case.

The World Cup organising committee continually talked up the progress made on workers’ rights, but on Ullah’s detention it too has nothing to say. Fifa said it was “actively following up” on the allegations that hundreds of guards were laid off after the final and later deported; a line it has been repeating since it first learned about the case in January. It declined to comment specifically on Ullah’s case.

Even those you might expect to speak up for Ullah have failed to do so. The office of the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) in Doha, which has worked closely with the Qataris on labour reforms for more than five years, has remained silent. It was informed about Ullah’s detention in February but has made no public statement about the case, only telling the Observer: “We are unable to provide information about [his] current status or the legal proceedings.”

It is unclear why, but the ILO’s office, which is almost entirely funded by the Qataris with a budget of $25m (£19m), has been criticised for presenting an overly optimistic view of Qatar’s labour reforms. The ILO says it has similar funding agreements with other countries.

For the past two weeks, Qatar, under its labour minister Ali bin Samikh al-Marri, has been chairing the ILO’s annual conference in Geneva, an event intended to promote labour rights around the world. Trade unions initially expressed outrage at the nomination, but then appear to have backed off, offering only the mildest of rebukes in return for a number of vague promises from the Qataris of future reforms.

Unions such as the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) worked alongside the Qataris for years but appear to have little to show for it. When the time came to take a stand for men such as Ullah, they too remained silent. A former ILO official told me the ITUC “surrendered” in Geneva. On the eve of the conference the BWI withdrew a report which was highly critical of Qatar’s record on workers’ rights.

For years Fifa, the ILO and some trade unions have hidden behind the mantra that “Qatar has made undeniable progress but more needs to be done”. How hollow that must sound to Shakir Ullah as he waits out his uncertain future in a Qatari jail.

In a statement, Fifa said: “Workers need to be free to raise their voices in line with their rights and freedoms under international standards and that due process must be guaranteed for anyone accused of wrongdoing.” It added: “According to the ILO, Qatar’s labour reforms have been significant and benefited hundreds of thousands of workers.”

The BWI said on the eve of the ILO conference it “presented the situation on the ground for thousands of migrant construction workers in Qatar who are exploited and abused by rogue employers and submitted a report pending for comments to [Qatar’s] labour minister”. In response, the minister agreed to discuss any issues raised at a meeting in July. “This result struck a blow for the migrant workers who had been left without hope of a decent work legacy after the World Cup,” the BWI said.

The ITUC did not respond to requests for comment.