It is no secret that the trading of visas has been a lucrative business in Saudi Arabia, whereby many people have obtained tens or hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of visas to bring expatriates into the country under their sponsorship. When the expatriates come, the sponsors "kafeels" allow them to work for others, and in return they pay them a fixed amount by the end of every month or year. These unjustified amounts, which have been taken by the sponsors from the expatriates, have made many Saudi sponsors very rich. The magnitude of this business has encouraged many Saudis to obtain visas to bring expatriates and allow them to work for others or on their own accounts as "free workers", if they want.
However, this trading of visas as well as some of the expatriate employees leaving their employers, who are supposedly their sponsors, and working for a different employer or on their own accounts as "free workers", has led to a chaos in the market. Also, it is well known that there are hundreds of thousands of expatriate employees, who are not working with their sponsors, which is a clear violation of the Saudi Labor Law and the Residence Law as well. To investigate such violations, the competent authorities have initiated a massive campaign against such entities that trade illegally in the black visa market. Nevertheless, this campaign has caused further chaos in the market as most of the entities are employing expatriates, who are not under their sponsorships. As a result and in response to the crackdown, some entities closed their doors and their expatriates did not go to work.
To give the affected entities and the expatriate employees some time to correct their status, the King of Saudi Arabia granted a grace period for three months on April 6, 2013. The expatriates, who are working for entities that are not their sponsors, have reached their sponsors to allow them to transfer their sponsorship to the entities, where they are working, to benefit from the grace period and to work legally in the country. Unfortunately, some sponsors have refused to transfer the sponsorships of their expatriates without paying them money and sometimes the amounts have been very high for some of the poorest expatriates. An expatriate told me that his sponsors has asked him to pay SR 20,000 to transfer his sponsorship, but his monthly salary does not exceed SR3500, which is really unfair for this poor expatriate.
Nevertheless, to close the door for some sponsors to exploit their expatriates, the Ministry of Labor requested the expatriates not to pay their sponsors any money to transfer their sponsorships as the ministry will transfer their sponsorships without the permissions of their sponsors, if their sponsors are entities in the private sector and there are in Red Class under the Nitaqat program. The announcement of the ministry was very much needed and timely but that would only solve part of the problem because if the entity is in the Green Class or higher the ministry may refuse to transfer the sponsorship of expatriates without the permission of the entities. Also, where the sponsor is an individual and not an entity, and they have expatriates as domestic helpers, then Nitaqat and its classes' system would not apply to them, and thus the ministry may not be able to force the sponsors to transfer the sponsorships of the expatriates to anybody or entity.
There is no doubt that what these sponsors are doing by requesting money from their expatriates to transfer their sponsorships is really embarrassing to all Saudis as they are exploiting poor expatriates to make money out of them. These sponsors should not only be deterred from exploiting the expatriates but they should also be punished. On the other hand, when we look at the root of the problem, we find that the requirement under the Residence Law that expatriates should have sponsors in Saudi Arabia has been abused by some greedy Saudis to exploit their expatriate employees. Thus, the Residence Law should be amended and the requirement of sponsor should be canceled so that sponsors with bad intentions would not be able to exploit their expatriates and the dreaded leash of sponsorship, which is around the neck of expatriates, would be cut.
The grace period, which is given by the king, will end in just over a month. A solution to the problem of the transfer sponsorships of expatriates without paying any money to their sponsors is required as a matter or real urgency as such sponsors are reaching new levels of greed these days as they know that when they transfer the sponsorships of their expatriate employees, they would not be able to exploit them anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment