Readers responding to my recent article on the sponsorship system are nearly unanimous that the current system needs a thorough review. Some readers demanded amendments to the system with guarantees for sponsors and giving more rights and a dignified status to expatriate workers.

The general impression I got from readers’ reactions is that the system in its current form serves only the interests of a small section of people who have found it as an unending boon for them at the expense of workers and citizens.

Reacting to my article, Muhammad Sindi wrote on his Facebook page that the system is a form of slavery in the sense that the sponsor exploits the worker by demanding regular monthly payments from him, whether he worked for him (the sponsor) or not.

A member of the Shoura Council, Abdul Rahman Al-Annad, pointed out on his Facebook page that the Council of Ministers’ decision No. 166, dated July 16, 2000, scrapped the technical terms “sponsor” and “sponsored” and replaced them with “employer” and “worker.”

The decision also forbade the employer from keeping the passports of a worker and his family in his custody and gave the worker freedom to move about in the Kingdom, as well as many other rights. But the order has never been fully implemented.

Al-Annad said the sixth clause of the Cabinet decision empowered competent authorities to take action against any employer who infringes on the legal and financial rights of a worker, including delay in the payment of wages and demanding money to give the worker his statutory rights.

The Cabinet decision also included giving permission to a worker with a valid residence permit to travel freely in the Kingdom or receive a driving license, buy a car, or obtain a telephone connection without his sponsor’s permission.

Above all, the decision took away an employer’s right to keep a worker’s passport, he said. Since the Cabinet decision has not been implemented, the flaws of the system continue to be exploited.

In its efforts to redress foreign workers’ woes, the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) recommended in 2008 the scrapping of the sponsorship system and replacing it with a government agency that would guarantee expatriate workers their rights. The NSHR also pointed out that the system violated Shariah law, which upholds the dignity of human beings.

Anything that violates Shariah is unconstitutional and against Saudi Arabia’s Basic Law of Governance.

The NSHR also argued that the sponsorship system damaged the Saudi image abroad, as the system contravenes many international agreements and charters to which the Kingdom is a signatory.

According to the Shoura Council’s Deputy Chairman Bandar Al-Hajjar, a former chairman of the NSHR, a single body should deal with the affairs of the entire foreign work force in the country instead of a combination of the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Interior and other government departments dealing with expatriate affairs.

Al-Hajjar stressed the need for abandoning the individual and company sponsorship system and formulating new regulations to govern foreign workers and the job market.

An NSHR study on the sponsorship system submitted to higher authorities in 2008 recommended that a body, named “The Expatriate Affairs Commission,” should deal with all expatriate matters.

The proposed commission should function under the Labor Ministry and be headed by the labor minister, the study said. Its secretary-general, discharging the role of executive director, should be appointed by the Council of Ministers on the nomination of the Ministry of Labor, with a board of directors representing the ministries of Labor, Interior, Commerce and Health in addition to human rights organizations, labor recruitment companies and the Council of Saudi Chambers, the study said.

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