JEDDAH, 27 January — Authorities are investigating a Dutch company in the Kingdom for allegedly violating Saudization regulations. This follows complaints by a Saudi national.
Saud Al-Qahtani, who worked as a lawyer for the company before he was sacked, charged that the company refused to recruit Saudis for higher positions filled by expatriates. He also accused the company of forcing him to justify the unjust dismissal of a Saudi before the labor disputes committee.
Reacting to the charges, Asam Balkhayur, director general of the company, told Arab News the Labor Department in Riyadh has certified that his firm has already met the mandatory level of Saudization.
The company has been recruiting qualified Saudi youths as part of a program to train the national workforce, he added.
Explaining the termination of Al-Qhatani’s services, Balkhayur said the Saudi was working in a government department in violation of company rules.
Al-Qahtani, however, denied that he was holding any government or private sector job at the time. He said the company has recruited expatriates in large numbers while turning down Saudi job applicants, particularly to high posts. He also pointed out that the company’s branch managers in Jeddah, Madinah, Qassim, the Eastern and Southern regions were not Saudis. He accused the company of discriminating against Saudis in fixing salary scales. The company never paid Saudis more than SR2,500 while their expatriate counterparts enjoyed higher wages and other benefits, he said.
Al-Qahtani cited as an example the dismissal a Saudi, who had five years’ experience at the Madinah branch, for no apparent reason. The Labor Department ordered the company to take him back, but the personnel manager had filled the post with his nephew at a higher salary though the man was inexperienced and did not possess any additional qualifications than the dismissed Saudi.
The Saudization Committee in the Makkah region is investigating the complaints. Al-Qahtani appealed to the authorities to set up a committee to investigate the disparity in the company’s salary scales as well.
