MADINAH, 30 July 2004 — More than 50 security guards at King Fahd Hospital in Madinah have gone on strike because the company they worked for refused to pay them their salaries which were already delayed for several months, Okaz reported.
Agitated by the non-payment of salaries, some of the security guards assaulted their supervisor, the paper reported.
The general manager of health affairs in Madinah described the incident as unacceptable and said the security guards should have gone to the department concerned to get their salary arrears paid instead of attacking the supervisor.
Ghazi Al-Harbi, a security guard, told Al-Madinah newspaper that he has not received his salaries for several months. He said he had contacted the company official many times to complain about the unpaid salaries and they had done nothing about it.
“They refuse to cooperate with us. We receive SR1,200 a month, which is not enough for workers with families. We cannot afford being paid late. We can hardly wait for the end of the month so we could receive our money. Many times we told them that we have families to feed, but they just keep ignoring us, he said.”
Another guard, Munwer Awad, said, “We contacted them through official channels and they closed the door on our faces. We contacted the governorate also about the problem and we are still waiting for a solution”. The Madinah health affairs department condemned the beating of the security guard supervisor saying that it was not the proper way to deal with a situation like this. This would only aggravate the situation rather than solve not the problem, he said.
