Over 2,000 Bangladeshi cleaners accuse company of exploitation
deadline, they fear they would be repatriated without receiving their due salaries.
The workers claim the company has not allowed them to transfer sponsorships to other companies.
Arab News tried to reach the consul general, but didn’t get any response.
The workers said they came together because they feared if individuals visited the company officials, they might be deported with- out their concerns being addressed.
A spokesman for the company told Arab News that more than 1,000 of the employees have valid iqamas and have expressed their willingness to continue working with the company.
He said Qutab Handrix is currently transferring the workers to their sponsorship according to the labor laws and that the process takes time and the workers need to be patient. Expats and foreign missions are confused due to discrepancies between Ministry of Labor guidelines and what is happening at deportation centers.
Biometric registration has just begun in Dammam, one of the largest expat pockets in the Kingdom.
Thousands of expatriates visit passport and deportation centers in Buraidah daily to meet the deadline. Buraidah is home to the sponsors of a number of Asian expats who are working for employers other than their sponsors and who have moved to larger cities such as Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
Fingerprinting for expatriates with residency permits wishing to leave the Kingdom finally began 10 days ago at deportation centers in Riyadh and Jeddah. Yet the slow pace at these two centers is causing long queues and delays. The recent power outages at passport offices in Abha and Madinah saw work halted for an entire day.
In Jeddah, the deportation center has allocated specific days for all major nationalities to report for biometric scanning. The passport office at Abruq Al-Ruqma is open exclusively for domestics and yet overcrowding and stampeding have been the inevitable result of small premises and high volume. Saudi businessmen have unanimously rejected a proposal made by the National Workers’ Committee to increase the minimum wage of Saudis in the private sector to SR 6,000.
The committee made the recommendation during the Social Dialogue Forum organized by the Ministry of Labor, which ended its deliberations in Jeddah yesterday.
“We made the proposal taking into account realistic criteria, which showed that the minimum wage should be SR 6,000,” said Nidal Radwan, president of the committee.
“We feel that in order to lead a decent life, a worker needs a minimum of SR 5, 837 excluding luxury items and expenses such as telephone and the Internet,” he said.
Although employers refused to consider this amount as a minimum wage, all parties agreed that it guarantees a dignified life. “It is not surprising that employers find it difficult to change what has been the norm for the past 30 years. Therefore, we need rules and regulations that bind employers to pay the aforesaid minimum wages,” he added.
The forum urged all social partners to rally together to be able to overcome the challenges of the labor market, and offer smart and innovative solutions to accompany the market’s latest reforms.
Fahad Al-Takhifi of the ministry said the next forum would focus on the role of women and the challenges faced by them in the industrial and food sectors as well as the retail sector. The number of women employees in the private sector has reached 160,000.