RIYADH: Workers who have sought refuge in Asian embassies in the capital after getting stranded as a result of disputes with their employers are left in a lurch without accommodation during the colder months of the year.

“I ran away from Hail (400 km away from Riyadh) since my sponsor asked me to break stones in a mountain area; I was recruited as a driver from Colombo,” said Ariyadasa Perera, a Sri Lankan worker who was standing outside the country’s embassy.

Diplomatic missions of countries that face the problem of runaway workers seeking to get back home tend to have shelters for women, but not for men.

“I sleep in parks and on the street because I do not have any friends here since I’ve only been here for five months,” said Perera, who says police or park attendants often chase him away from his slumber.

According to a welfare officer at the Sri Lankan Embassy, his mission gives shelter to women only because it cannot afford to host the male workers.

“We have advised them to find their own accommodation and have told them that the mission would only facilitate negotiations with their sponsors,” he said.

Haroonur Rashid, labor counselor at the Bangladesh Embassy, claimed that his mission has the highest number of stranded male workers.

“We provide a safe house for female workers, mostly hospital cleaners and housemaids,” he said. “We do not give accommodation for men because their number is too large,” Rashid said, stressing the need for expediting the process of dispute resolution.

Such disputes arise as a result of workers seeking actions against their sponsors for myriad reasons. Furthermore, all people that seek exit from the Kingdom must be cleared for a final-exit visa, which typically involves the sponsor. This process is complicated when runaway workers show up at missions with no identification or in illegal residency status.

Rashid said this process can take up to a year, and the distressed worker cannot go home without completing his case. “Even dead bodies of such workers cannot be repatriated without completing the formalities,” he said.

Rashid said his government works to crack down on unscrupulous labor recruiters, but that any issues with Saudi employers are out of their jurisdiction.

“As a manpower exporting country, we are helpless in this matter,” Rashid stressed.

Not far from the Sri Lankan Embassy, Abdul Lateef, who was recruited as a family driver for a monthly salary of SR700, said he quit because he did not receive a salary in the six months he worked for the family.

Lateef put up with this situation for six months because he was promised that he would be paid in lump sum.

He said he had borrowed the equivalent of SR5,000 to pay a recruitment agent in Colombo. His agent is now blacklisted. The Saudi family he worked for owes him SR4,200 in unpaid wages.