JEDDAH: Salih Alpaslan, a 55-year-old Turkish engineer, who was not allowed by his sponsor to travel to his country to attend his mother's funeral has, with the help of the Labor Office, almost solved his problems. Alpaslan expressed his gratitude to Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi for the quick solution to his problems that enabled him to transfer his sponsorship to a Turkish company and gave him the freedom to travel to Turkey.

Overcome by emotion, Alpaslan, who missed his mother's funeral said, the issue for him was more than money. “No money in the world can compensate for my absence from my mother’s funeral and my failing in my duty on her last days,” Alpaslan said in a letter expressing his gratitude to Arab News which published his story last month.

Alpaslan worked for two years under the sponsorship of a Saudi company, PC Marine Services. In 2006, the company went into partnership with a Turkish company, Sener Arda Construction. With the agreement of both companies, Alpaslan was appointed general manager of the partnership and the branch office. A dispute occ-urred between the two companies in Septem-ber 2007 and Alpaslan submitted his resignation near the end of his contract, making it clear that he did not want to renew his contract under the sponsorship of PC Marine Services. In March last year, the company brought some baseless charges against him.

Alpaslan commended the Saudi legal system. The Court of Grievances affirmed his innocence after finding that the charges against him had no basis and ruled that the company could not bring any charge against him.

Under the Saudi sponsorship system, an employer is responsible for a foreign employee and must grant permission for him to leave the country. The sponsor has virtually total control over the worker. There are many cases in which workers have been unable to escape from abusive conditions or even return home upon completion of their contracts because employers have denied them permission to leave the country. Alpaslan wondered what would happen to an ordinary worker who had no idea how to get his rights from his sponsor. According to a directive issued by the labor minister in January 2007, employers who delay paying wages for more than two consecutive months are prohibited from recruiting new employees from abroad for 12 months.

Arab News has reported several recent cases of foreign workers being exploited by their Saudi sponsors; the exploitation included non-payment of salaries, not renewing residence permits, not allowing them to transfer to another company or leave the country.

A Saudi writer Abdullah Abou Al-Samh recently wrote that various clauses of the sponsorship system were evolved with the aim of maintaining the internal security. “But they have now become obsolete and inappropriate due to the complexities of contemporary life and the large number of foreigners living in the Kingdom. Society has also progressed to a level where we don’t need all these regulations.”