JUBAIL, 21 June 2004 — An Indian employee of Comet Contracting, a Jubail-based company that owes its staff more than eight months’ salaries, has died. The cause of death was not immediately known, but colleagues do not rule out suicide.

Srinivas Ravi Kumar of Karnataka was among 130 employees of Comet, which Arab News reported owes up to a year’s salaries, leaving staff destitute and in some cases reduced to begging.

A member of the company’s administrative staff has made off with the worker’s passports and iqamas, meaning they are virtual prisoners of their employer.

Based on an Arab News report and a memorandum from the workers, the Indian ambassador took up the matter with Eastern Province Governor Prince Muhammad ibn Fahd, who assured him the problem would be resolved soon.

But company staff say nothing has happened and they remain stranded in a worker’s housing complex without food and other amenities.

According to one worker, Ravi Kumar, who died on Thursday, had spoken to his family the previous night and afterward “appeared under heavy stress.”

When he did not surface the following morning, colleagues went to his room, where they found him dead. Police have taken away the body for a postmortem.

Ravi Kumar’s death has added to the frustration and fear of the stranded workers. “People are breaking up. There is a limit to human suffering, and we have passed that limit,” said a worker from Bihar who has not been paid for a year. “It looks like death is our only way out.”

Comet employees had earlier filed a case against their employer but the verdict, though in their favor, was never implemented. They then approached the Eastern Province Governorate and went through a long bureaucratic procedure without any success.

The Indian Embassy in Riyadh told Arab News it was going to take up the issue with higher authorities again and expressed hope the suffering of the Indian workers will soon be over.

It is not known what will happen to the body of Ravi Kumar. Even his dead body cannot be taken to India without all manner of formalities.