Six months after Qatar promised major improvements to its treatment of migrant workers, Amnesty International has warned that its progress so far is “woefully inadequate” and accused the Gulf state of dragging its feet.

In the wake of the international outcry that followed Guardian investigations that revealed the desperate plight of many of Qatar’s army of migrant workers, the government commissioned international law firm DLA Piper to undertake a comprehensive review. It reported its findings in May and made more than 60 recommendations.

In turn, Qatar promised to reform the much-criticised kafala system and do more to enforce existing laws to protect the rights of immigrant workers.

Amnesty said that while there had been increased acknowledgement from senior Qatari figures of the scale of the problem, not enough was being done to enact even the limited recommendations made in the DLA Piper report.

In September, on a tour of Europe that included a meeting with David Cameron at 10 Downing St, the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said he was “personally hurt about the situation”. But Amnesty International’s head of refugee and migrant rights, Sherif Elsayed-Ali, said time was fast running out.

“Urgent action is needed to ensure we do not end up with a World Cup tournament that is built on forced labour and exploitation,” he said.

“Despite making repeated promises to clean up its act ahead of the World Cup, the government of Qatar still appears to be dragging its feet over some of the most fundamental changes needed, such as abolishing the exit permit and overhauling its abusive sponsorship system.

“Six months later, only a handful of the limited measures announced in May have even been partially implemented. Overall the steps taken so far are woefully insufficient.”

A series of stories in the Guardian have shown that migrant workers from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and elsewhere were dying in their hundreds. While some were listed as having been killed in workplace accidents, many more were listed as having been killed by sudden, unexplained cardiac arrest.

The government confirmed in the DLA Piper report that 964 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh had died while living and working in the Gulf state in 2012 and 2013.

Many more were injured in workplace accidents, some left trapped in limbo with no passport or insurance, and huge numbers toiled in extreme heat for low wages and lived in inhumane conditions.

Often, they had been recruited by unscrupulous agents in their home countries who then demanded repayment of loans and found them jobs on far lower wages than promised. Some found themselves held to ransom, unable to return home unless they gave up their claims to unpaid wages because their passports were held by their employer. When the scale of the problem came to light the International Trade Union Confederation estimated that 4,000 workers could die before a ball is kicked at the 2022 World Cup. The issue gained traction partly because many of the migrant workers in Qatar, a population estimated at between 1.4 million and 1.8 million, are working on infrastructure projects that will underpin the contentious tournament.

The Qatari government has claimed that its proposed changes to the kafala sponsorship system, which ties migrant workers to a single employer, represent a major step forward, but Amnesty said the proposed changes were at best a minor improvement.

Instead of tying a worker to the employer indefinitely, the proposed new law will limit the restriction to the length of the contract, which could be as long as five years.

And while campaigners and a report in May by the UN special rapporteur called for the abolition of the exit visa system that requires workers to seek the permission of their employer before leaving the country, Qatar instead proposed a new system that would give employers 72 hours to appeal against their departure.

Local media in Doha have reported that the new laws could be passed this year or early in 2015, but Amnesty said in their current form they would amount to a missed opportunity.

“We’re calling for something that substantively alters the power balance between worker and employer. That’s how we’ll judge any progress on exit permits and kafala. These proposals don’t do that,” said James Lynch of Amnesty, who has extensively researched the issues in the region.

“It is difficult to understand why more hasn’t happened on these key, pressing issues. We don’t think things are happening at the right speed,” he said. “It is six months since that announcement, but it’s a year since our report and it’s over a year since the Guardian investigation. It’s four years since they won the right to host the World Cup.”Lynch said it was important to maintain the pressure on world football’s governing body, Fifa. The decision to award the World Cup to the tiny emirate has come under huge scrutiny, with concern over temperatures that reach 50C in the summer and allegations of impropriety around the bidding process added to the human rights concerns.

“We want nobody to be under any complacent view that this problem has been addressed. The same abuses are still happening,” said Lynch.

“This issue has been crying out for focus and urgent attention for some time. We really hope that in six months the picture will look better.”

The Qatari government has pointed to an increase in the number of inspectors and Amnesty praises the more active stance taken by the Qatar Foundation and the 2022 supreme committee in policing standards among their own contractors.

But even among the organising committee that is building the stadiums for the World Cup, supposed to be setting a gold standard for others, malpractice remains. A Guardian investigation in July found that while construction workers building the stadiums were staying in purpose-built new accommodation blocks, they were still being paid only 45p an hour.

The Qataris insist that they serious about making progress and point to measures including the introduction of an electronic transfer system to ensure payment of wages on time and higher fines for illegally holding employees’ passports.

Since May, it has increased the number of workplace inspectors from 200 to 244, closed 33 unsafe worksites for breaching labour laws, increased the minimum mandated space required to house each worker by 50% and improved health and safety regulations.

Qatar’s sports minister, Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali, on Tuesday told Associated Press that it was making headway.

“We understand this problem. For us, it’s a human question,” he said, insisting that Qataris were not “vicious people who are like vampires. We have emotions, we feel bad.”

He added: “It is something that really needs big, big work from us. But we are really tackling this problem face-to-face. We are not hiding.”