JEDDAH, 24 July 2005 — Rizwan Abdul Nabi is scheduled to appear in a Riyadh appellate court today after all negotiations with his employer, Khaled Al-Abbass Al-Telmesani, owner of Najo Forging Factory/Metal Industries Plant in Alkhobar, failed. Arab News featured Abdul Nabi’s plight on July 10 in an article entitled “Sponsor’s Deception Adds to the Woes of Indian Worker.”
In February of this year, a Labor Court Committee judge ruled in Abdul Nabi’s favor and ordered Al-Telmesani to pay SR12,008 and provide him with airfare to India. Al-Telmesani immediately appealed the judge’s decision and requested a hearing in Riyadh, further delaying Abdul Nabi’s repatriation for another five months. After filing the appeal, Al-Telmesani invited Abdul Nabi to his office and convinced him to accept SR5,000 and an airline ticket, or face several more months in litigation.
When Arab News first spoke to Al-Telmesani three weeks ago, he claimed that he had paid Abdul Nabi all his dues after the court’s ruling, and that he has a no-claim letter signed to that effect by Abdul Nabi. It is this no-claim letter that Al-Telmesani intends to present in court today, which Abdul Nabi fears might actually cost him the case.
“I was tricked into signing that letter. I thought I was signing an agreement to settle the debt for SR5,000 and an airline ticket so that I could escape my miserable situation. But when the money and the ticket never materialized, and when I asked, I was told that I had signed a letter of no-claim and was shown the door,” Abdul Nabi said.
Now Abdul Nabi awaits resolution of the case in the appellate courts. He is worried that if the initial case he has won is any indicator of what is to be expected of Al-Telmesani, then he will have to make several more trips to Riyadh at his own expense over a period of months, as, he says, “Al-Telmesani will try to wear me out by having the hearing rescheduled as often as he can.”
In his attempt to make the trip to Riyadh, Abdul Nabi initially met with difficulties at the railway station as he was barred from boarding the train by passports officials, who demanded to see a current iqama that due to his current predicament, he did not have.
“They didn’t accept the letter the court gave me that allows me to stay and travel in the Kingdom until the adjudication of my case,” he said. He was forced to cancel his travel plans for the day, but was able to convince officials yesterday to allow him to board the train in time to appear in court today.
From a source within Al-Telmesani’s administration, Arab News was able to obtain a list of 32 other people who have either run away or left Najo Forging Factory/Metal Industries Plant after giving up on collecting their past due salaries. There were 15 Indians, one Sri Lankan, 10 Filipinos, two Bangladeshis and four Saudis on the list.
Arab News spoke to one of the Saudis listed. Under condition of anonymity, during a recorded telephone conversation with this journalist, he said: “I don’t want to say anything bad about Mr. Khaled because I learned a lot from him, but I was indeed owed several months pay when I left. I decided not to pursue it because I didn’t want to ruin my relations with him and decided to think of it as involuntary tuition to learn my trade. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is considered normal nowadays.”
When asked if he himself saw cases of mental and physical abuse and salary withholding by Al-Telmesani, as claimed by his current and former employees while he was employed there, he said: “Yes. He did these things.”
When Arab News contacted Al-Telmesani last week, he declined to comment on the allegations made against him.
