Private companies are constantly warning the public in the local press against dealing with employees who have “run away” without informing the employer. Some of the advertisements allege that a maid had disappeared from her sponsor’s house along with some valuable items or a truck driver has fled with a vehicle full of goods which were being taken to another town. Some employers offer rewards for anyone providing information on the whereabouts of the “runaway” workers whose pictures appear in the warning.
What makes workers with a legal residence permit (iqama) run away from their sponsors after spending years in their service? What makes a driver betray his employer and steal a truck loaded with goods which he then sells? What makes so many maids run away from their sponsors? As we know, none of these could be called isolated incidents but such incidents, again as we all know, are on the increase.
We may not ever discover the real motives that drive people to behave in this way unless the individuals themselves inform us of their reasons. One logical explanation to the growing phenomenon, however, is the unlimited trust some employers put in their workers. Some sponsors turned an entire business over to the workers, giving them a free hand to buy, sell, enter into contracts and deposit money in banks. Some employers never even bother to look at the books. By the same token, this does not tell the whole story about the behavior of sponsors to their workers.
There are certainly employers here in the Kingdom who inflict every imaginable injustice upon their workers. Some saddle their employees with hard work, asking them to do what is beyond their capacity and then don’t pay the workers on time, if at all. And this takes no account of both the physical and verbal abuse unleashed upon the poor workers. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that many workers choose to run away.
It is interesting to note that most cases involving runaway maids are reported within the first three months of their arrival in the Kingdom. Some maids go to work for other families while others simply disappear with their sponsors knowing nothing about them; some maids manage to leave the country, having made plans to return with a different sponsor. This is a continuing problem; it has been with us for decades and it cries out for a genuine solution that protects the rights of both employers and employees. When can we expect one?
