“The Consulate General has taken urgent measures to convince some members of the community, who still believe that they will get compensation from the Saudi authorities, that there is no basis for this,” Al-Watan daily quoted Muhammad Tareq, media adviser at the consulate, as saying.

Some Pakistanis had told the newspaper that they came to know from a report aired by Radio Pakistan that distribution of compensation is still going on.

“I contacted the director of Radio Pakistan in Islamabad who in turn denied broadcasting anything about it. Several Pakistani nationals have also contacted the embassy in Riyadh and the Consulate General in Jeddah to know whether there was any truth in the rumors. We informed all of them that there is no truth at all and they are baseless rumors.”

Tareq also noted that he has now been coordinating with some English and Urdu newspapers to publish the consulate’s clarification.

“These are fabricated reports spread by some. Members of the Pakistani community should not believe in such baseless reports,” Tareq warned his compatriots in a press statement. “The commendable and supportive positions taken by Saudi Arabia toward the people of Pakistan in their hours of distress could have prompted some people to exploit these humanitarian gestures shown by the Kingdom.”

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis gathered in front of Saudi post offices in Jeddah after widespread rumors the Saudi government was paying out compensation for damage from catastrophic floods that struck the city in January this year. The post offices managed to earn more than SR500,000 within four days after spreading the rumors early last month. As a result, the Makkah governorate issued a press statement saying that the rumor was not true and the governorate office was not accepting any compensation request from expatriates living in Jeddah.

The statement said that those affected by the floods were already registered by a special committee formed to assess damages from the floods.

However, many expatriates from other cities also sent compensation claims by priority mail to the governorate office. In Madinah alone, revenues of post offices from sending mails exceeded SR1 million in 10 days.

Reports that thousands of Pakistanis gathered in front of post offices in Riyadh and Dammam over the last two weeks to file compensation claims prompted the Pakistani diplomatic mission to come up with the denial.