“The police in Jubail called me on Sunday morning and handed over our passports with final exits on them and one-way air tickets. They asked me to sign a paper that indicated that the case was being closed,” said the expatriate who worked as a pipe technician at the Jubail company. “I am a very happy man,” he said, and thanked Arab News for highlighting his case.
“Once the story was in the newspaper, some of the managers in the company who wanted to block my possible return to Saudi Arabia or any other GCC state realized they were on the wrong side of the law. They approached many government offices after the labor court ruled in my favor. However, officials at every department asked the company to execute the court’s order.”
The expatriate praised the Saudi judiciary. “We keep hearing all kinds of stories in the media. We always get this wrong impression that expatriates do not win cases. Many of my fellow countrymen had advised me to not take my case to court. ‘Nothing will come of it,’ they told me. However, I had full faith in the system. I want to thank all the officials at the labor court in Jubail and Dammam and the police officials who helped me in every possible way.”
The news of the court decision was being widely discussed in expatriate circles, and on Sunday fellow expatriates were heard congratulating the man for persevering and having the patience to pursue the case in courts. “To keep your family without an iqama and no money and to keep your children without school, how many of us could really put up with that? This man deserves our congratulations,” said one of his friends. “All this means that the justice system works and that it is not lopsided in the favor of Saudis,” he added.
The expat and his family fly home to Mumbai on Tuesday.
As reported earlier, the expatriate worker wanted to leave the Kingdom for good. However, he discovered as he and his family arrived at the airport that his employers substituted an exit/re-entry visa instead of the proper final exit visa, which would have blocked his possible return to the Kingdom on a new employment visa.
Under the revised law, the no-objection certificate previously required of companies for departing employees was eliminated, if they had a proper final exit visa on their passports. With the underhanded, last-minute switch at the airport, the company could make it appear as if the employee had not left in good standing. Had the man not inspected his passports carefully, he could have been precluded from returning to the Kingdom for years. The final exit visa on one’s passport is seen by Saudi missions abroad as proof that the person has left the company with a clean slate.
