JEDDAH, 2 February 2007 — THE TWO new anti-abuse labor measures announced by the Saudi government on Wednesday are good news for the thousands of workers who are brought to the Kingdom to work by unscrupulous employers and either not paid on time, sometimes for months on end, or left abandoned on our streets with no place to sleep and no food to eat.
The new measures will punish bad employers by not allowing them to recruit new workers for a year if they delay the salaries of their workers two months in a row. Furthermore, foreign workers who are not paid for three months in a row will now have the right to transfer sponsorship right away if they can find a new job, without having to wait for the one-year period before transferring sponsorship, and without having to pay the original employer any transfer fees.
This is excellent news for the six million foreigners working in Saudi Arabia, who unlike Saudis, do not have the freedom to shop around for better jobs if their original employer cannot pay them on time. And don’t think that the delayed payment of salaries happens only to laborers and maids. This problem affects many managers, engineers and doctors too. I used to have an Egyptian friend who worked for one of the biggest construction companies here as an engineer, but his salary was always four months late, meaning that he had to live off of his credit card. Things got so bad with his cash flow that when we went grocery shopping together he would pay for my purchases with his credit card and I would pay him the equivalent in cash so that he would have some actual paper money in his pocket.
The kingdom has good labor laws; the problem is in how often they are enforced to actually make a difference. I often hear other Saudis say that disgruntled workers can go and file a complaint at the labor court. That’s true in theory, but the practice is much different. While determined, resourceful and patient workers usually win their cases in court if there has been abuse, most foreign workers don’t have the luxury of savings, time and patience to win their cases in court. How long can a worker, far from home, who was being paid only SR1,500 a month, possibly survive here without any pay (and often no accommodation if their employer forces them to move out of company housing) if their cases take months and sometimes years to resolve?
Saudis know very well about this inherent weakness in the system, and many of them exploit it ruthlessly by refusing to appear in court and thus get their hearings adjourned again and again. It’s only a matter of a few months before a foreign worker left destitute without a salary, and forced to live on the generosity and handouts of kind compatriots, breaks down and accepts the out-of-court settlement offered by his or her sponsor, which is naturally less than what the employer actually owes them.
Many Saudis will think that I am being unfair to local employers, but can we really feel sorry for someone who hires 50 or 100 workers from abroad and then never shows up, leaving them abandoned often without residence papers, accommodation or even food? Bewildered by being abandoned in such a foreign land like ours, these workers are forced to depend on the kindness of strangers until they can either find new jobs here or be returned home at Saudi government expense.
The Ministry of Labor should take stronger measures to deal with shameless employers who don’t pay their workers on time or who abandon them outright. Their photos and names should be published in newspapers, along with an explanation of their “crime”. I think this is the only way to deal with this scandalous situation. Saudis value their reputation highly, and being publicly shamed, I’m sure, would make them think twice before delaying salaries or dumping their workers on the streets like garbage.
Saudi Shiites Celebrate Ashoura
I JUST came back from a three-day trip to Qatif in the Eastern Province, which is the heartland of the Saudi Shiite community.
Ashoura, or the commemoration of the Battle of Kerbala in 680 CE, in which the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Imam Hussein ibn Ali, his family and followers were killed in a battle with the Umayyads, was in full swing. I witnessed daily “Aaza” processions in the ancient island of Tarout, during which faithful men beat their chests while remembering the death of Hussein.
I also attended the nightly “Husseiniyas”, which are religious lectures held in halls. One of them was given by an extremely talented 9-year-old boy, Ahmad Mohamed Rajab, who managed to have the whole hall in tears by the end of his talk by recounting the suffering of Imam Hussein and his followers in the desert near Karbala in what is now Iraq.
Mohammed Khabbaz, a young professional who was my tour guide in Qatif, told me that these occasions are the only public venue where most Shiite men feel that it is okay to cry in public and release their tensions.
I also met the president of the Qatif municipal council, Jafar Shaybe, who told me that although things have improved over the past two years for the Shiite community, there is still room for improvement.
Sheikh Hassan Al-Saffar, one of the leading religious leaders of the Shiites here, told a group of visiting journalists that while the regional tensions caused by the civil war in Iraq and the confrontation between the US and Iran were dangerous, he hoped that all sides would work toward calming the situation.
Sheikh Saffar, along with other Shiite leaders, met with King Fahd in 1993 in Jeddah to talk about their demands after many of them were imprisoned in the early 1980s after disturbances following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
“Many Shiites were released from prisons, exiles allowed to return and passports given back to Shiites who had been banned from traveling, following our meeting with Fahd in 1993,” said Saffar.
“Now they allow us to build our own mosques and print our own books,” said the sheikh. “Now Shiites can write in Saudi newspapers and magazines. We don’t want to focus on the things that still need to be changed because the tensions are running high and we feel that it is not the right time to be pushing for more changes.”
Comments or questions? E-mail me at: [email protected]. Visit my blog to read a longer account of my Qatif trip at: http://rasheedsworld.blogspot.com.
