HOFOUF, 9 February 2005 — Forty male and female hospital technicians and attendants stopped working for an hour after their employer neglected to pay them for a couple of months. The health care professionals were of different nationalities and were hired by a national company with a contract to provide workers to an eye hospital in Al-Ahsa, Al-Watan newspaper reported.
The company responsible had postponed paying them their wages for more than two months for no apparent reason. Some of the workers say the company has no right to delay paying them and were surprised that their salaries are missing while all the doctors and Saudi employees have been getting paid on time. Some also have criticized their treatment, calling on responsible authorities to intervene on their behalf.
The incharge of medical affairs in Al-Ahsa, Dr. Khalifa Al-Mulhem, says they have taken over and are managing the problem of the missing money. The department since then has succeeded in coaxing the workers back to their jobs at the hospital. He indicated that the work stoppage didn’t last more than an hour. He also announced that they are now going to handle such problems by creating effective procedures with the contractor.
Dr. Al-Mulhem has assured the hospital staff he will find a solution to this problem and arranged for them to receive their missing salaries. He said the stoppage was prompted after the contractor paid its Saudi workers but left the foreign workers in the lurch, which many of the foreign workers interpreted as unjust treatment, as they initially were assured they would be paid regularly and in a timely fashion.
