A classic case in point is that of 45-year-old Shahul Hameed from India who has been working with an Alkhobar-based trading company for 18 years. Three years ago he decided to leave the company for good. He submitted papers expressing his intention to leave and requested the company to provide him with his end-of-service benefits. The company managers refused to respond, prompting Hameed to approach the Labor Court in Dammam. A year-and-a-half later, the court ruled in his favor and directed the company to pay his dues totaling a little less than SR23,000.
The company, using its legal right, approached the higher court in Riyadh. Fourteen months later, the Riyadh court also ruled in Hameed’s favor. Ideally, things should have ended there, and Hameed should have gone on a final exit to his country. It didn’t happen that way. He is currently living in the Dammam Deportation Center.
When the case was being heard in Riyadh, Hameed's employers approached the Deportation Center in Dammam and declared him an absconder. Once an expatriate is declared an absconder he cannot go back to his home country through the regular procedure. He has to be arrested and then sent home through the Deportation Center. Not only that: He is blacklisted and cannot come back to any Gulf country for future employment.
Hameed has sought the intervention of the Saudi human rights body and contested his company’s declaring him an absconder at a time when he was engaged in a legal battle with it. His case is pending resolution, and there is little evidence to indicate it will soon be resolved.
Hameed’s case has thrown light on the rampant abuse of the “huroob” clause of the labor/immigration law. Government rules allow sponsors to declare employees who have not shown up for work as absconders. Employers have to approach a particular department at the Deportation Center. It is called the Idaarat-ul-Waafideen. This department only deals with cases of absconders. It is at this department that employers have to submit all details about the allegedly absconding employee. His iqama number and passport details are registered in the system, and he is then officially an absconder.
Once an employee is classed as an absconder, his sponsor is absolved of any possible criminal or illegal activity that the expatriate may commit. For example, if a foreign national is arrested for illegal activity, it is his sponsor who has to suffer the consequences. The law is basically designed to protect the rights of the sponsor. It is well-intentioned; however, it is increasingly misused to punish a “demanding” employee as was the case with Hameed.
Arab News inquiries have revealed that in many cases, expatriates have been declared absconders just so that the Saudi employers can get new visas issued in their place. In one well-documented case in Riyadh, a Saudi employer applied for a house driver’s visa. He got it. He hired a driver from Sri Lanka. After the driver got his iqama and work permit for two years, his sponsor went to the Deportation Center and declared him an absconder. The Sri Lankan man was very much in his employment and was in fact taking the man's children to school on a daily basis.
When the house driver was declared an absconder, the Deportation Center issued the relevant papers indicating the same. The Saudi then approached another government ministry and applied for a new visa for a house driver. He immediately got it. He sold this visa to one of the employment agencies and made money out of it.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan man continued to work as the house driver, unaware of the fact that he had been an illegal resident and a runaway in the eyes of the Passport Department. He realized what had happened to him at the time of his iqama renewal. His sponsor then took him to the Deportation Center and told the authorities that his employee had returned and that he wanted the label of absconder against him removed. The deportation center followed the rules and the Sri Lankan house driver was again taken off the list and his iqama was renewed for another two years.
The Sri Lankan man’s case was in the past. The government authorities realized that the procedure was being misused. They have now made it extremely difficult for anybody to take a name off the “huroob” list. This has, however, made things even more difficult for foreign workers. If they are declared an absconder, for whatever reason, genuine or otherwise, and even if they appear in person at the employer’s place, they cannot be taken off the list and have to go back home through the Deportation Center in distress and ignominy.
Rights activists familiar with such cases have described the “huroob” clause as “sharp weapon” in the hands of unscrupulous employers who can declare their employees runaways if they feel that the worker is trying to approach the labor office to settle a dispute with them.
Earlier this year, Navanethem Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for an end to the sponsorship system in Gulf countries, saying it exposed workers to abuses. “Reports concerning this region consistently cite ongoing practices of unlawful confiscation of passports, withholding of wages and exploitation by some recruitment agencies and employers,” Pillay said.
