JEDDAH, 1 August 2004 — Employers not paying their employees or delaying their salaries is a non-Islamic phenomenon that has become disturbingly familiar in the Kingdom. Cases where employees are not paid are piling up and people are expressing their frustration, anger and desperation about the dire circumstances they are trapped into.
“I’ve spoken to a lawyer about my unpaid dues but he’s not optimistic about getting my dues” Shurooq Al-Ahmadi, a female Saudi teacher at a local private school told Arab News. “I left the school because it wasn’t paying me regularly. I still haven’t received my end-of-service benefits. It’s so unfair. I’m working to support myself and not for the sake of having a career to pass time. These people don’t fear Allah.”
“I’ve been setting tables for three years,” says Carlos, a former Filipino graduate student of geography who works as a waiter at one of the popular local cafes.
“And that’s fine because times are tough. But what makes it almost impossible to tolerate is that in nearly six months I’ve only been paid a month’s salary — a mere SR700. I keep pursuing this issue with my manager but he says it’s in the owner’s hands. This is the second year of delayed salaries... I’m living on continuous debts,” he said.
In Jeddah, according to Al-Madinah, more than 11 employees and their families are about to end up in the street because a national company they work for has failed to pay them their salaries for more than 10 months.
Nasr Al-Azb, one of the employees, confirmed that the company owner withheld their salaries and continued to procrastinate using lame excuses even after they had submitted official complaints to authorities.
Al-Azb said: “All this and I’m a man with a family to support. I live in a rented apartment and haven’t been able to pay the rent. I’m a diabetic and my health has suffered because of all this.”
Another employee, Sameer Al-Arabi, said: “Our families and we are going to be homeless because of the company-owner’s negligence. We can’t borrow any more, our families could go hungry because of him. What are we to do? Steal?”
Entrances and exits at Madinah’s King Fahd Hospital were bereft of security staff, reported Okaz Arabic daily, after more than 50 guards stopped work because the company had not paid them their salaries. In fact the delay in pay led to a physical assault between a security guard and a supervisor.
The guards complained to the hospital authorities but to no avail.
In Riyadh, Diyar Najed Establishment for Antiquities and Culture has failed to pay its multinational employees ranging from janitors to designers their full salaries for eight months in addition to not paying former employees their end-of-service dues.
Earlier this month, according to Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper, Al-Jouf Governor Prince Fahd ibn Bader firmly warned companies and employers against delaying workers’ salaries due to their delinquency.
And yet it was just recently that Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi confirmed to the press that human and financial rights of all employees — citizens or residents — are protected under the labor laws and that all violators will be punished. Islamic law instructs “to give a worker his wages before his sweat dries”.
In these cases the worker is wading in his sweat long after the job is done. Justice and compensation is a sight yet to be seen. The truth is there will be unpaid employees as long as there are unpunished employers.
