With workers gone, roadside trenches stay open
The crackdown on illegal workers has caused the slowdown and in some cases stoppage of work in laying telephone and electricity cables throughout Riyadh.
The disruption is due to subcontractors employing illegal part-time workers who have stopped working until they could correct their status and continue working again after finding new sponsors.
The subcontractors must have their own workers under their sponsorship. But they cannot under the present circumstances. Most employers don’t have visas to recruit workers from their respective countries or any other manpower-supplying countries.
Assuming that they have visas, bringing the workers to the Kingdom could not be done immediately. Paperwork must be gone through and documents prepared to comply with rules and regulations before being submitted to a local recruitment agency.
Meanwhile, residents are complaining that unfinished trench work is causing inconvenience. Residents can’t park their cars in their usual parking areas.
In some districts like Malaz, parking is possible but the trenches are wide enough for a vehicle's wheel to get stuck.
“To make the bad situation worse, the streets in residential areas have literally become narrower because of the trenches,” said Abdul Rahman, a Pakistani teacher in the area. “They used to be safe enough for both pedestrians and cars coming from opposite directions. Not anymore,” he added. Pedestrians must give way to cars from both directions.
A visit to an area in Malaz, just off Sitten Street, revealed a trench like a yawning chasm with no workers in sight. “It belongs to the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC),” said a Pakistani, janitor of an apartment building in the area.
“The trench is intended for new technology cables or fiber optics for digital data transmission for communication cables,” said Eric P. Asi, a senior engineer for a local company. “The other trenches in the area are for power cables for electric companies.”
A visit to another residential area not far from the Old Airport Road, also called King Abdulaziz Road, showed workers finishing a job for Mobily.
Work is also ongoing in major projects along Khurais Road, Exit 9 and 10 as well as along Dammam Road which has unavoidably caused traffic jams during peak hours.