JEDDAH, 3 July 2005 — A large number of former employees of Al-Rajhi Commercial Foreign Exchange assembled in front of Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency’s office here yesterday and petitioned for the second time for jobs at Bank Albilad and their financial entitlements amounting to SR20 million.
A senior SAMA official said the agency would set up a committee to solve the problems of some 1,000 Al-Rajhi employees. About 600 of them lost their jobs when Al-Rajhi merged with seven other financial institutions to form Bank Albilad.
The SAMA official said the case had been transferred to the department which monitors banks. This development comes a day after Bank Albilad CEO Azzam Abalkhail announced that the case of Al-Rajhi Commercial employees would be settled in stages. According to Al-Watan newspaper, Albilad agreed to hire all employees after training them.
The affected employees’ demand is legitimate. When approving the merger, the Council of Ministers made it clear that all employees must be given jobs in the new bank.
Khaled Abu Rashed, the lawyer who is representing the employees, said Albilad was legally bound to pay the salaries and other benefits of the affected employees, as “their work contracts are deemed continuous from the time they were employed by Al-Rajhi Commercial.”
Faisal Khoja, who petitioned SAMA on behalf of the employees, said Albilad had refused to employ them, adding that they had been living without salary or benefits for the last three months.
Abdul Rahman Al-Sharif, former investment account manager at the money exchange, said the affected employees had lodged complaints against the firm a month ago.
“So far no action has been taken. We have not received our dues nor have we been transferred to Bank Albilad,” he told Arab News.
The police who were called to the scene at SAMA’s request confiscated the cameras of mediapersons who had taken pictures. They also detained some mediapersons and urged newspapers not to publish such pictures.
