JEDDAH, 26 October 2004 — A potentially lethal situation is building on Al-Thamaneen Street, just south of Hera Street in Jeddah. Hundreds of mostly illegal immigrants loiter in the center-divide awaiting work. Jeddah residents in their dozens descend on this area looking for handymen or casual labor.
A number of the hopeful loiterers have been killed in recent months as they cross the carriageway as vehicles slow, looking for temporary labor. These crossings place motorists, passengers and pedestrians alike, in harms way.
“I came here last Haj and I wasn’t able to get work, so now I wait here for when someone needs workers quickly, and hope I get picked,” said one man named Ravi. “There are too many people, so I can’t always find work.”
Al-Thamaneen Street is a busy thoroughfare. Pedestrians as well as children on bicycles continuously throng the street which is used by fast moving traffic.
“I came to Saudi Arabia to work for a company and I held a work visa for that,” said another respondent called Nazrul. “The company didn’t want me and didn’t pay for my return ticket to Bangladesh. I heard of this way of finding work so now I come and sit here until someone hires me for some work.”
Many workers in situations like this, he said, hoped to save enough money to afford their tickets back to their home country. Others waited in the hope of finding real employment.
A number of these individuals have perished as a result of crossing back-and-forth on the busy street. In one incident a few months ago in another popular labor-hire location, eight laborers were killed when a speeding car ran out of control, mounting the curb and mowing them down.
The hopeful laborers explained that they chose to wait on the median strip because it gave them maximum chance to run to cars on either side of the road. The strip they said was so wide in this area it had plenty of space to accommodate all the work seekers easily.
“We stay in the middle so that if the police come to one side of the street we can run to the other side,” said Ahmad, an Indian. “The police car would have to go to a turning point to catch us and that gives us time to run away.”
“It’s a big problem for us when we drive here,” Nazim, a Pakistani taxi driver said. “When the police come, all the people run away and this can cause serious accidents.”
