Five years on from being controversially awarded the right to host the world's most-watched sporting event, the construction work on six of at least eight venues that will be in used for the 2022 World Cup has begun, said a report.

Battered by criticism, facing investigation over graft issues and the financial fallout from an energy price slump, Qatar is forging ahead with multi-billion dollar work on the 2022 World Cup, reported the AFP.

World Cup organisers said the preparatory work has also started on a 80,000-seater stadium in Lusail, a new $45 billion city being built 15km north of Doha, where the final will be held.

Qatar will even complete work on the first ground, the 40,000-seater Khalifa International Stadium - the venue for the 2019 World Athletics Championships - by the end of 2016, six years before the first game will be played, they stated.

Elsewhere, work has begun on the Al Rayyan stadium, the Qatar Foundation Stadium and the Al Wakrah stadium. All are 40,000 seat venues, which will host matches up to the quarterfinals, said the report citing the committee officials.

Also underway is work at the 60,000-capacity Al Bayt Stadium, which will host one of the World Cup semifinals, it stated.

Qatar is set to spend $225 billion on new infrastructure, the Qatar National Bank estimated in a report in September, much of which will be used during the World Cup.

Despite Qatar looking for potential budget cuts elsewhere, spending on the World Cup is protected, finance minister Ali Sherif Al Emadi said this year.

Most notable of the huge projects underway is the $36 billion Doha Metro, which will begin running in 2019.

The plan is to have 37 stations operating in four years. A tram line will be built to Lusail, said the report.

All the World Cup-related infrastructure work can be monitored and overseen on CCTV by some of the more than 400 members of Qatar's World Cup organising team from an all-white space-age control room in their skyscraper Al Bidda Tower headquarters on the Doha waterfront.

"Great progress has been made so far in preparations," Nasser Al Khater, assistant general secretary of Qatar's organising committee, said last month. "Since winning the bid in 2010, incredible amounts of work have gone in," he added.