RIYADH, 10 October — An investigation team from the Passports Department in Riyadh has arrested 12 expatriates who were violating labor regulations at a date-processing factory in the city.
Lt.-Col. Salman Al-Joaid, director of the department that monitors foreigners, said his officials had caught the violators while they were cleaning and sorting dates for re-packing in Al-Rawabi district, close to the Al-Rabwah vegetable market.
They were working for a Saudi on a contract basis according to which he paid three riyals for each box of dates they produced.
A Bangladeshi laborer recruited the others, a number of whom were overstayers, to work for the Saudi.
The laborers had valid iqamas but paid their sponsors to allow them to work for someone else.
A special committee will examine the violations committed by the sponsors and the Saudi who jointly employed the laborers.
The Saudi violators of the regulations will be punished with a fine or jail sentence or both, while the expats face jail and deportation.
The official urged citizens to employ expat laborers legitimately as illegal protection or employment of expats will bring severe punishment.
Passport authorities arrested and deported more than 6,000 illegal workers from a number of Arab and Asian countries following raids in Jeddah over the last few months.
The immigrants, all of them violated the Kingdom's residence regulations, had sheltered themselves in the old districts of the city and worked as street vendors.
More than 4,000 Arab and Asian immigrants who came to perform Umrah and stayed back in the country were arrested during raids in southern and central Makkah earlier this year.
