RIYADH: Foreign workers who were repatriated from the Kingdom’s prisons earlier are being sent home by return flights on arrival in the Kingdom with forged documents.
An immigration official at the Jeddah airport, who didn’t want to be named, said those workers who are sent to prisons and detention camps are fingerprinted when they arrive at the airport for deportation.
“Now, even if they come with different passports, their real identities are revealed after fingerprinting and iris scan at the airport and such passengers are sent back.”
A SriLankan airlines official, who also asked not to be named, said the airline carries at least one such Sri Lankan passenger daily. “The airline is losing a lot of money because it has to bear the travel expenses of workers who are deported from the airport on arrival with forged documents,” he said, adding all airlines are bearing the travel expenses of such passengers.
He said these workers don’t realize that their identities are registered in the database at the airport of the host country and resorting to unscrupulous means won’t work.
He said the influx of such passengers are more in Jeddah since a large number of deportees to India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines are repatriated from the Jeddah detention camp.
“We have sent more than 4,600 island workers to Colombo through the detention camp in Jeddah during the past 12 months,” said Abdul Lateef Mohammed Lafeer, Sri Lanka’s consul general in Jeddah. “The detention center in Jeddah is the only camp in the Kingdom that bears the cost of airfare to the workers’ land of origin.” Sri Lankan Labor Counselor L. Abeyratne said either the embassy or the worker has to bear the return passage to Colombo in the event of a deportation.
