With the July 3 amnesty deadline approaching, many sponsors are forcing workers to give up their end-of-service benefits in exchange for release letters.

Muhammad Al-Masri, a Syrian national, said his sponsor has asked him to give up his remaining entitlements in return for a letter of release that will enable him to transfer his sponsorship.

“He wants me to give up SR 45,000 of my entitlements for the release letter. I did file a case against him, but time is not on my side.”

He said: “Since my sponsor is in an advanced Nitaqat category, I need a release letter from him. Actually I do not want a transfer, but they delay our paychecks, sometimes up to six months, and they only give us enough money to keep going.”

Ahmad Al-Mahi, who is in a similar position, but with an amount of SR 18,000 due to him, said his sponsor wants him to sign a paper saying that he received all his entitlements in return for an exit only visa. “But I refused to accept it,” he said.

In a phone interview with Arab News, Majid Qaroob, an attorney, said “the only way out for these workers is to sign a paper saying they got all their rights but then file a case against the sponsor claiming that the paper is false, or that they were forced to sign to get their entitlements.”

Qaroob said the labor court would rule in favor of the worker and penalize the sponsor.

His evidence for this assertion is that “the court will ask for a document that proves the sponsor gave the worker his rights, and in that case the sponsor will find nothing to give the court.”

He said: “These and similar cases of worker extortion are considered human trafficking cases and are severely penalized.” He added: “The regulator established many controls and conditions for sponsorship transfers, to stop all types of worker manipulation or extortion. Unfortunately, there are businesses that use these despicable and unethical methods.”

Hussain Al-Shareef, general supervisor of the National Society for Human Rights in Makkah, said the workers must be made aware of their rights so that no one can be extorted. “Any cases that come to us are referred to the authorities. All these cases have something in common: They resort to extortion and are in violation of international labor laws and agreements.”