Somayya Jabarti

Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — Saeedah and Mansoor along with other countless fellow Indonesians carrying passports newly issued by their consulate were turned away at the entrance of the Dallah fingerprinting center, thus denied the chance to rectify their status.



The thin, light green ‘supposed’ passports recently received from their consulate are not passports at all. They are merely travel documents apparently issued for one purpose: to get them out of Saudi Arabia.



“This is not a passport,” a Saudi officer standing at the fingerprinting center’s entrance told Saeedah. “Only those with real passports can enter, the one with a dark green cover (for Indonesian nationals).”



“But this is what my consulate gave me,” said Saeedah. “I submitted all the required papers of my new ‘kafeel’ (sponsor) in order to get a new passport so my current employer can become my sponsor.”



“Your consulate gave you a travel document, not a passport,” repeated the officer. “Go check with your consulate.”



“My husband, a Filipino got a real new passport from his consulate,” Saeedah said. “And this is what my consulate does to me?”



According to the signs hung on Abraq Al-Rughama’s Passport Department fences over a month ago, all expatriate domestic workers could transfer their sponsorships to new sponsors by completing fingerprinting, submitting a valid passport, a medical report, new sponsor info (i.e. financial statements, ID etc.) and making the new sponsor pay the standard visa fee (SR 2,000).



Accordingly, all expats whose passports were either lost or as good as lost (i.e. with former sponsors who refused to hand over passports) were advised to refer to their relevant embassies and consulates. The consulates/embassies are supposed to issue new passports for expats who want to stay in the Kingdom or travel documents with which they could legally leave.



However, where Indonesian workers are concerned, the decision to legally stay or leave has been taken out of their hands as they increasingly discover that their consulate is only issuing them travel documents and not passports. In fact, it was speculated that this was one of the factors that contributed to the outbursts that took place at the consulate last week leading to the fire incident.



“Our consulate tricks us while other countries’ embassies and consulates help their people,” said Mansoor, a middle-aged Indonesian man standing across the street from his consulate.



The vicinity, in which the Indonesian consulate is located, showed no traces of human congestion seen weeks ago prior to last week’s fires. Instead, the entire area surrounding the consulate had intensive security presence.



“See — the passport application form our consulate gave us didn’t tell us it would issue a ‘fake’ passport to exit with,” said Mansoor, furiously poking at the document in his hand. “We stood for long hours under the sun, all of us – women, children and men – to get new passports because our former sponsors have our old ones and won’t return them to us.”



With no Indonesian consulate personnel in sight, many Saudi women and men accompanying their Indonesian workers frustratingly addressed the officers standing at the consulate’s main entrance.



Umm Fahd, a Saudi woman who owns a small tailor shop, accompanied with four middle-aged Indonesian women was one of these Saudis there at the consulate entrance.



“We just came from the Dallah fingerprinting center where they told us these new passports issued by the the Indonesian consulate are no good,” she told one of the officers.



“I stood in the long line with these women outside the Indonesian consulate for almost eight hours weeks ago so that they can get new passports,” continued Umm Fahd. “We did everything they said, we gave them the papers and information they asked for.”



The officer referred her to another Saudi officer also standing at the entrance of the consulate who again told her that real passports were needed to rectify status. He then asked Umm Fahd about her Indonesian employees’ former sponsors.



“Where are their ‘kafeels’ (sponsors)?” he asked Umm Fahd. “One sponsor’s number is disconnected, another sponsor said they threw away the passport and a third said that even if they had it they won’t return it to us unless we paid them SR9,000. They actually said, “they deserve to be deported!” replied Umm Fahd.



“Now after all this trouble we take them to be fingerprinted only to be told that these passports are not real? Are you telling me the consulate has lied to their people?” Umm Fahd angrily asked.



“This is like battle my sister,” answered one of the officers. “And in battle there’s trickery. They want them out, that’s it.”



Across the street, almost 15 feet away from the consulate, an Indonesian child mutely stood by his sobbing mother, his small fist tightly wrapped around her long shirt tail. His mother, face buried in her hands, gushed in her native tongue between sobs.



“She is saying we have mouths to feed back home,” a nearby Indonesian man translated.



He continued to translate, “she is saying we are good people, we only want to work so that we can live and help our loved ones live.”



The man silently handed her some Kleenex then turned and continued in his broken Arabic.



“What is our crime? ‘Ashan ana faqeer’ (because I am poor in Arabic)? Why is our consulate, our country doing this to us?”