Several families are having difficulties in finding alternative means of transport for their children to go to school after bus drivers stopped transport services following the inspection campaign raids. Many expats work on jobs requiring them to work full-time during the night while they do part-time jobs as school drivers during the day for an extra income as they try to support their families.

The clampdown on illegal workers or drivers has created a vacuum in the school transport business because not all drivers are under the sponsorship of the schools. Many drivers have stopped working as a result fearing arrest and deportation.

A recent report said that several international schools have taken steps to transfer the sponsorship of some of their drivers and have already issued letters to their sponsors.

“A lot of school bus drivers have stopped working avoiding arrests by security authorities. Most of them have no contracts and are not under the sponsorship of schools. But they have small buses to provide schools with transportation for schoolchildren and are earning monthly salaries,” Ahmed Jalal Al-Deen, a Sudanese who is looking for a driver for his children, told Arab News.

Law enforcement authorities have arrested thousands of illegal expats in the Kingdom following the end of a grace period in November last year which had granted an opportunity to foreigners to regularize their status.

Several businesses had warned that they would be severely affected by the decision, as many of their non-regular employees were people without proper official documents.

“We have fired three bus drivers because we cannot transfer their sponsorships. Now we have only four drivers who cannot provide transportation to all the students of our school. We will hire more drivers at the beginning of the next academic year,” Abbas Marzooq, a private school director, told Arab News.

“I am working in a food factory in Jeddah but my monthly salary does not exceed SR2,000. Therefore, I used to work as a school bus driver using my small bus to provide school transportation services to a number of customers in order to have another source of income to fulfill my needs. However, I have stopped my services to avoid punitive action by security authorities as I am an illegal bus driver,” Omer Radwan, a Sudanese resident, said.

Following the end of the amnesty period, hundreds of bus drivers stopped taking female students to university amid concerns they would be arrested for breaking the law for not being officially registered with the higher learning institution, according to local media

“I am forced to drive our daughters and sisters to the university since no bus showed up. We informed the university about the situation, but officials there said that the bus drivers could no longer transport students as they are afraid they would be arrested.”

The Ministry of Labor (MoL) has conducted 30,000 raids so far in its crackdown on illegal workers in the Kingdom. Deputy Labor Minister Mufrej Al-Haqbani said recently that the teams of inspectors involved in the operations included officials from the Ministry of Interior.