The plight of an expatriate girl who was studying in Sudan and came to the Kingdom to visit her mother in October deserves serious attention.
The girl’s mother, who is Sudanese, is a statistician at a private medical center in Yanbu’s Royal Commission.
The girl, who came to the Kingdom taking a week’s leave from university, took the visit as an opportunity to complete formalities to keep her name in her mother’s iqama, which was due for renewal. Expat-riate children studying abroad often return to the Kingdom at regular intervals to renew their residence permits.
This girl, however, could not secure an exit and re-entry visa to allow her to return to university.
When she went to the Passport Department to get her passport stamped, she was told that she could not get an exit or re-entry visa, as data relating to expatriates working at her mother’s company was inaccessible as the company is in dispute with a government department, which canceled the company’s interaction with several government departments. Consequently, the company’s online relations with the Passport Department were also cut.
The immediate victims of such drastic steps by government departments are innocent expatriate workers and their relatives. As a result of such unilateral measures, it has become impossible for many expatriates to travel abroad even in emergencies.
In this case, the student could not get her exit visa nor was she able to return to classes in Sudan at the end of her leave. The university will most likely cancel her enrollment.
Nobody supplied an answer to Izzuddin Abdul Basit, the girl’s guardian, when he asked, “What should we do to enable my girl return to attend classes? We did not violate any regulation but we are being punished for a dispute between our company and a government department.”
I do not know whether the issue has been resolved. The only words I have to tell the girl’s guardian is that only God Almighty can set our matters right.
