A black market for vegetables and fruits has emerged overnight in Jeddah following the strict enforcement of Saudization regulations in the Central Vegetable and Fruit Market. The location is at the proposed site for a municipal public garden to the west of the Expressway.

The market is apparently an alternative to the central market where the Saudization Committee of the Ministry of Labor has barred any transactions of expatriate vegetable traders.

An informed source at the committee said the expatriate owners of vegetable cold storages and trucks, who have been working illegally in the vegetable market and had to flee the market when the committee started enforcing new labor regulations, were behind the black market

The source added that the illegal operators used to control nearly quarter of the market stocks.

The committee does not have enough security men to deal with the illegal traders in the unofficial market. He also said the cold storages used to hoard vegetables in order to create artificial scarcity as they recently did with tomato with the aim of pushing up its price.

Moatesim Abu Zinada, deputy chief of the vegetable brokers’ community in Jeddah, said he has been demanding the municipality to use the empty space, where the black market is currently being operated, for the expansion of the central market but the municipality always said it planned to make a public park there.

He said his last letter to the municipality put forward several options to curtail the illegal parallel market in that area.

His suggestions included conversion of the space to an annex to the central market, for the warehousing of fruits such as dates collected during harvest seasons to be managed by a company under the supervision of the brokers’ community.

He also called for a parking area to be provided for the workers and visitors to the market. Another suggestion was to fence the area so that illegal traders cannot intrude into it.