Brothers Asrar-ul-Haq, 27, and Ashraf-ul-Haq, 25, now endure a kind of limbo in Riyadh after being told by Gulf Catering Co. that the job offers with the salaries they agreed to in Mumbai do not exist.

In the presence of the brothers, Gulf Catering officials called on a representative from the employment agency Imtiyaz International to explain the contract who reluctantly admitted he had invented the high salary numbers and vacation details.

“We were shocked and didn’t know what to do,” elder brother Asrar-ul-Haq told Arab News. “We protested and told our Saudi manager what we were promised in India. We showed them the documents we signed in India.”

The actual jobs the young men believed they were taking pay half what they were promised with the food allowance reduced by 25 percent and a repatriation trip offered every three years rather than the two years listed in the contract.

Unless they sign a new contract the two brothers are in limbo. They will receive neither insurance nor iqamas. This process is called contract substitution, where wages and benefits agreed-upon before departure are reworked after the worker has already arrived and has fewer choices.

The practice common for lower-skilled workers from labor-remitting countries, such as the Philippines, who have a minimum wage demand and require contracts before issuing overseas employment certificates for their workers. In this case, however, the contract-substitution scam came to light because the men’s father, Mufti Quasid Ahmad Al-Qasmi, a veteran expatriate worker in the Kingdom, demanded the contract details be provided in writing.

None of them expected the details provided by Mumbai-based Imtiyaz International would be different from the ones demanded after the men's arrival. They have been in Riyadh for 47 days now and are unclear what their next step should be.

Many foreign workers become victims of dubious agents who promise the moon to their clients in a bid to extract the maximum amount of money from them.

Once they land here they are trapped, and they are forced to sign on the dotted lines. The fact that such a large group’s name is being used to deceive people is a cause for alarm. This only brings the name of Saudi Arabia business into disrepute because people tend to see all this as the handiwork of Saudi employers.

Indian expatriates familiar with the plight of the two brothers have called for revoking the license of the Imtiyaz International (Registration No. 4374/MUM/PER/1000/4 3/4/6818/2004) in Mumbai. They maintain the agency should get maximum punishment and fined monetarily. Some Indian organizations have vowed to approach the Saudi Labor Ministry and the Saudi Consulate in Mumbai to get the agent barred from doing business in Saudi Arabia.

In the meantime, the two brothers are seeking legal advice as to what they should do next.

“The salary that Gulf Catering is offering is a lot less than what we were making in India through teaching,” Asrar-ul-Haq told Arab News. “Our father has already paid a huge sum to get these jobs. Imagine what will we do with SR550 per month?”