Low pay: New form of abuse

As the July 3 deadline for labor correction process draws closer, many companies have started exploiting thousands of “illegal” expats by offering them low salaries, while their existing sponsors demanded huge amounts to give them transfer permits.
Some companies who wanted to recruit unskilled Indian workers were offering SR 800 to SR 900 as basic salary, an informed source at the Indian Consulate in Jeddah told Arab News, adding that the consulate had insisted they be given at least SR 1,000.
Thousands of foreign workers are still waiting in front of consulates as well as labor, passport and chamber offices to get their paper works completed before the July 3 deadline, either to leave the Kingdom or find new jobs.
Many expatriates had to pay huge amounts to their previous sponsors to get letters for the transfer of their jobs to new employers or leave the Kingdom. Some had to pay up to SR 5,000 to get their papers.
Col. Badr Al-Malik, spokesman of the Passport Department, said expats who fail to prove that they arrived in the Kingdom legally, showing their entry visa copies, would be considered intruders. “Embassies do not have the jurisdiction to complete travel procedures of such workers,” he said. Runaway workers, whose passports are either lost or destroyed by their sponsors, would be in trouble.
According to the Labor Ministry, 460,000 expats have run away from their sponsors including 58,615 house servants.
Among them 165,180 are still in the Kingdom, while 244,770 did not return from their countries after vacation.
Among the runaway house servants 31,776 were women and 26,839 men.
In a related development, Abdul Monem Al-Shahri, director of the Labor Office in Makkah, disclosed plans to give work permits to dependents of foreign workers, like housewives, to work in the private sector. Al-Shahri did not say when such permits would be issued.
Thousands of expat housewives currently work as schoolteachers. Raids conducted by the ministry targeting such teachers, before the amnesty, had forced many private schools to close down. The government’s decision to give such teachers work permits has been widely welcomed by expats.