This newspaper is contacted all too regularly by expats complaining about bosses who have not paid them for months on end. Not paying workers in a timely manner, or worse, not paying them at all, is a shameful and un-Islamic practice that has done considerable harm to the country’s image.
The announcement that the Ministry of Labor intends to crack down on employers that do not pay workers their due and within a reasonable time is therefore most welcome. It is high time that rogue employers were punished for what is theft from their staff.
But this needs more than good intentions. The planned penalty — banning such employers from recruitment for a year plus allowing those affected to transfer sponsorship to another employer — has to be implemented. Actions are as necessary as words. It will have no effect whatsoever if defaulting employers find ways, through a bribe here or a favor there, of skirting the law and replacing staff. Furthermore, the promise to crack down on illegal and immoral employment practices is worthless without proven enforcement. Public humiliation would do wonders to stop to this all-too-common practice. Examples need to be made. Perhaps there should be a blacklist of defaulters published on the Labor ministry’s website.
The move clearly is part of bigger changes on the employment front. Just over a week ago Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi said that in the future companies would have to prove that they are financially viable before they can recruit workers from abroad. That too is welcome. Every company that applies to bring in more foreign workers should have their finances rigorously checked.
There is still much more, though, that should be done to address the problems faced by expat workers.
The international rackets in recruiting foreign workers needs to be smashed. Arab News reported recently of a worker in Dubai who borrowed the equivalent of $3,000 for a job in construction earning the equivalent of $1.77 an hour. In this example, the recruiter received a portion of the money paid by the employer for that employee. In his case, the company paid the recruiter 12 dirhams an hour, and the worker received 6.5 dirhams per hour from that sum. Certainly there are better ways to recruit workers, ways that would cut out the recruiting middlemen and raise salaries for workers without costing the employer extra. But whatever solution would require greater cooperation between governments.
The days of rock-bottom salaries in places like India and the Philippines are fast ending. Saudi Arabia is going to have to pay higher rates than they do if it is to attract the skills that are needed. Present regulations are weighted far too heavily in favor of employers who, understandably, want to keep their human resource expenses as low as possible. But the end result of that is not more skilled expats, but less. If expat workers cannot change employer and get more money here, they will go elsewhere. And it is Saudi Arabia that will suffer as result.
