RIYADH: As part of an intensified effort to rid Saudi Arabia of illegal workers, the Kingdom has deported 257 Bangladeshi workers over the last seven days.
Those sent home include 139 workers who were not given exit passes by the embassy. “According to deportation practice, workers without passports are given exit passes to leave Saudi Arabia, but in some cases Saudi officials don’t provide necessary information about the stranded workers, which creates problems in terms of issuing exit papers,” said M. Haroonor Rasheed, labor counselor at the Bangladesh Embassy.
The workers were from deportation centers in Riyadh and Dammam, where they had been stranded for quite some time, Rasheed said, adding that the embassy issues around 600 exit passes each month.
Asked whether the Saudi government arranged a special flight to deport the workers, Rasheed said, “They were flown on board different airlines and in most of the cases, the cost of tickets were borne by the Saudi government ... This mass deportation is not related to any plan to get rid of our workers; in fact, it is a routine affair.”
He also appealed to Saudi officials to regularly inform the Bangladeshi Embassy about illegal workers to enable it to issue exit passes. He blamed Saudi employers and Bangladeshi recruiting agents for problems faced by the workers.
“The nonpayment of salary and the soaring cost of recruitment are major problems currently faced by our immigrant workers,” he said.
“A group of 60 Bangladeshi workers came to the embassy yesterday protesting against the local Al-Moragen Contracting Est., which has not paid them their salaries for the last few months, leaving them on the brink of hunger,” he said.
“We immediately referred the case to the Labor Court, which summoned the sponsor and gave instructions to settle the dispute ... Local employers, in a substantial number of cases, fail to pay even the minimum salary of SR550,” he said.
According to a report, which quotes an immigration official at Dhaka’s Zia International Airport, a total of 224 workers, including 139 from Saudi Arabia and 85 from Kuwait, were sent back on Saturday.
“Last Tuesday, the Kingdom deported 118 Bangladeshis on charges of violating Saudi laws by overstaying, or not having passports or work permits,” said the report. It added that a total of 313 workers have so far been deported from Kuwait.
The deportation from Kuwait started after a large number of Asian workers, mostly Bangladeshis, went on strike and damaged property demanding pay rise and better working conditions. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested some 800 Bangladeshis for damaging vehicles and attacking the police.
