The announcement on Monday by the Cabinet of a host of new measures to help foreign workers in the Kingdom; stiffer penalties for driving offenses and higher visa fees for visitors and workers in the country, may have caught some by surprise, but are necessary to deal with the challenging times that we are going through.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman announced that he had ordered the formation of a SR100 million fund to be used to pay out the various dues owed to foreign workers in the country. This became urgently needed recently with the foundering of several large construction companies, which have found themselves victims of the economic slowdown and thus unable to pay thousands of their workers for six months or even more.
This decisive action by the king means that these workers will be paid their dues and given free air transportation back to their home countries or allowed to transfer to a different employer if they are able to find new jobs. The money paid out from the fund will be deducted from the accounts of the respective concerned companies. The Labor Minister Mufrej Al-Haqabani was authorized by the king to address the housing issues of those workers, and to contract with legal consultancy agencies to pursue the financial claims of the workers in local courts.
In the realm of road safety, the Cabinet approved much stiffer penalties for drifting, increasing the fine from the minimum of SR1,000 and maximum of SR2,000 to SR20,000 for the first offense, with the offender’s car being impounded for 15 days. Second time offenders will be fined SR40,000 and sent to court to face jail time. Third time violators will be fined SR60,000 and their cars permanently impounded. Clearly, the low fines were not reducing the number of drifting cases, forcing the government to take much stiffer action to try and curb this dangerous phenomenon.
“The drifter does not harm himself only but society as well,” Dr. Thuraya Al-Areed, member of the Shoura Council, told our sister publication Alsharq Alawsat. “This decision will quickly put an end to this phenomenon, since tolerant punishments leave the door open for breaching the law,” she added. And indeed, hitting offenders in their pockets will be a fast way of curbing this very dangerous practice.
Finally, the new visa fees that were announced and are scheduled to come into effect from the beginning of October, will be a welcome source of added income to the government’s coffers. While many expatriates living in the Kingdom were surprised by this announcement, they also realized that these increases were inevitable given the economic phase we are passing through.
For too long foreigners in the Kingdom have grown accustomed to bringing their families to live here with them, encouraged by the country’s fairly flexible visa policies. Now they will have to rethink these living arrangements. Hopefully these new visa fees will encourage local businessmen to hire more Saudis, who obviously do not need pricey visas and Iqamas to live and work here.
During these times of belt-tightening, all the residents of the Kingdom, Saudis and foreigners, are being asked to make some sacrifices. When times were exceptionally good, all benefitted handsomely and foreign workers were able to send home tax-free hundreds of millions of dollars every year to their families. It is now time to give a little back.
• The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman announced that he had ordered the formation of a SR100 million fund to be used to pay out the various dues owed to foreign workers in the country. This became urgently needed recently with the foundering of several large construction companies, which have found themselves victims of the economic slowdown and thus unable to pay thousands of their workers for six months or even more.
This decisive action by the king means that these workers will be paid their dues and given free air transportation back to their home countries or allowed to transfer to a different employer if they are able to find new jobs. The money paid out from the fund will be deducted from the accounts of the respective concerned companies. The Labor Minister Mufrej Al-Haqabani was authorized by the king to address the housing issues of those workers, and to contract with legal consultancy agencies to pursue the financial claims of the workers in local courts.
In the realm of road safety, the Cabinet approved much stiffer penalties for drifting, increasing the fine from the minimum of SR1,000 and maximum of SR2,000 to SR20,000 for the first offense, with the offender’s car being impounded for 15 days. Second time offenders will be fined SR40,000 and sent to court to face jail time. Third time violators will be fined SR60,000 and their cars permanently impounded. Clearly, the low fines were not reducing the number of drifting cases, forcing the government to take much stiffer action to try and curb this dangerous phenomenon.
“The drifter does not harm himself only but society as well,” Dr. Thuraya Al-Areed, member of the Shoura Council, told our sister publication Alsharq Alawsat. “This decision will quickly put an end to this phenomenon, since tolerant punishments leave the door open for breaching the law,” she added. And indeed, hitting offenders in their pockets will be a fast way of curbing this very dangerous practice.
Finally, the new visa fees that were announced and are scheduled to come into effect from the beginning of October, will be a welcome source of added income to the government’s coffers. While many expatriates living in the Kingdom were surprised by this announcement, they also realized that these increases were inevitable given the economic phase we are passing through.
For too long foreigners in the Kingdom have grown accustomed to bringing their families to live here with them, encouraged by the country’s fairly flexible visa policies. Now they will have to rethink these living arrangements. Hopefully these new visa fees will encourage local businessmen to hire more Saudis, who obviously do not need pricey visas and Iqamas to live and work here.
During these times of belt-tightening, all the residents of the Kingdom, Saudis and foreigners, are being asked to make some sacrifices. When times were exceptionally good, all benefitted handsomely and foreign workers were able to send home tax-free hundreds of millions of dollars every year to their families. It is now time to give a little back.
• The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.
