In February, just before Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s three-day visit to Riyadh, Saudi Ambassador to India Faisal Hassan Trad said that there were 1.6 million Indians in the Kingdom.

Al-Humaid disclosed the higher figure in an interview to the Press Trust of India (PTI) on Thursday.

“We have more than two million Indian workers,” he said in Washington, adding that, as such, Indians comprise the largest expatriate community in the Kingdom.

Al-Humaid was in the US capital attending the first meeting of labor and employment ministers of the G20 countries.

Saudi Arabia, he said, “appreciates” the Indian workers for contributing to the Kingdom’s economic development. He noted that by providing job opportunities to two million Indians, Saudi Arabia was “benefiting the Indian economy and relieving the unemployment problem in India.”

Trad also acknowledged in his February interview that Indians are the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia. “We have around seven million expatriates in Saudi Arabia. So, that makes Indians the largest expatriate group. There are people of around 100 nationalities from all Arab, Muslim and Western countries,” he told Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) in February.

In his PTI interview, Al-Humaid urged the Indian government to inform its workers about their rights and obligations before they leave for the Kingdom for work.

The minister said that some workers do not know their rights and thus they are exploited by recruitment agencies.

“Before workers come to Saudi Arabia, they sign contracts with the Indian agencies who give them false information. They promise them certain salaries. And these agencies sign different contracts with employers. So some of the disputes come because we have two contracts,” he said.

In the event that the contract signed with a foreign labor recruitment agency differs from the contract with the Saudi employer, the Kingdom’s labor law recognizes the latter. For example, if a local recruiter in Mumbai draws up a contract for an Indian worker promising a salary in Saudi Arabia higher than what the contract from the Saudi employer states, the Labor Office will only recognize the local contractual terms. This means foreign workers can be duped into promises of wages higher than the ones they end up earning. Since many foreign workers borrow money to pay for  recruitment services, they end up ensnared in a cycle of debt that keeps them in Saudi Arabia working for a pittance of what they expected to earn to pay off their obligations back home.

“Whenever I meet ambassadors from the sending countries, I urge them to raise the awareness of their workers about their rights before they come to Saudi Arabia,” said Al-Humaid.

The number of expatriates employed in the Kingdom rose by 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, says the results of a survey released by GulfTalent.com.

Qatar and Oman also saw increases over the same period while Bahrain, UAE and Kuwait saw a drop in the number of expatriate employees, with declines of 7.7 percent, 4.2 percent and 2.8 percent respectively.

The company compiled the results, based on actual staff recruitment, after speaking to 11,000 managers across the region.

The survey found that among the foreign workers, Western nationals were most likely to return home if they lost their jobs, with 55 percent doing so, compared to 37 percent of Asians and 18 percent of Arabs.

Another survey, also by GulfTalent.com, says that employment of expatriates increased significantly in Saudi Arabia and Qatar during the fourth quarter of 2009.

Of expatriates who lost their jobs, over 50 percent found new employment within the region, while 30 percent returned to their home countries.

Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain saw a net fall in the number of expatriate employees. Oman had a marginal rise in employment.