MADINAH, 28 March 2003 — Overstayers are a perennial problem in the holy city of Madinah and are putting the Passport Department personnel and Saudi citizens to great inconvenience, according to a report in Al-Madinah newspaper.
The Passport Department tries hard to do its job by arresting the overstayers and deporting them to their home countries. Saudi citizens feel the pinch when they let these overstayers clean their cars. Many of them have lost their valuables from their cars in the process of having them cleaned by these overstayers.
The overstayers are known to have stolen wallets, watches, money, cameras and other valuables left inside the cars. On returning home, owners discover that their items have gone missing, but when they return to the scene the illegal cleaner has vanished.
Al-Madinah undertook an investigation to see if such reports are true. The paper sent a reporter to have his car cleaned, and told him to leave his expensive watch inside the car in a place so obvious that the cleaner could not miss it. He then walked away from the car and observed the cleaner from a distance. The cleaner picked up the watch many times, looking around suspiciously to see if anyone was watching him. Finally, he put it into his pocket. The reporter then returned, and made it obvious that he realized the watch was missing. He asked the cleaner to give back the watch. The cleaner said that he had to put it in a safe place until he finished cleaning the car. While the reporter and the cleaner were talking, Passport Department personnel appeared on the scene and all the cleaners fled.
Al-Madinah interviewed the passport officers. Officer Nasser said the main reason Saudis get their cars cleaned by the overstayers is that the service comes cheap. The cleaners get SR10 for each car they clean, sometimes SR5 if the car is small. Car cleaning outfits charge as much as SR20 per car, sometimes SR30 for larger cars.
Officer Hani said cleaners are mushrooming everywhere in Madinah. He said a number of workers and security guards, most of them from Bangladesh, are known to have struck deals with neighborhood residents to clean their cars every day for about SR70 a month. If the worker cleans 10 cars a day, he makes an additional SR500 — that is, approximately half his salary, making it a profitable business.
Officer Hani said he did not mind people cleaning cars as long as they are legal residents in the country.
