Ahmed Bin Hamdan
Okaz/Saudi Gazette
MADINAH — The Ministry of Labor has set up a special committee to discuss non-payment of payment of wages to Saudi Oger company employees for many months and said it has taken a number of punitive measures against the company.
An official source said the ministry has stopped a number of services provided to the company including General Organization for Social Security (GOSI) and the Passport Department (Jawazat).
The source, who opted not to be identified, said the company's pay delay is currently being considered by the Riyadh Governorate which has also established a special committee for the purpose.
He, however, said the company started to pay the monthly salaries of some of its employees and promised to pay all the overdues in installments.
Several Saudi Oger employees filed a complaint to the Labor Ministry accusing the company of delaying their salaries for more than four months and said they were unable to honor their commitment to commercial banks for the loans they took to build houses or buy cars and could not sustain their families.
They said the company justified the pay delay by saying that the government has not paid it for a number of projects it has executed.
According to the source, the company's manager in the Kingdom, Fareed Shakir, in an internal memo issued about 10 days ago, promised to pay a month's salary to all employees a week from Feb. 14 but has not honored his promise.
The manager also promised to pay all the delayed salaries in installments and to deposit the salaries in the employees' bank accounts regularly from March but nothing has happened thus far.
Sayyar Al-Shammari, a Saudi engineer, said the company first justified the pay delay due to the Kingdom's budget and later said the government has not paid it for the public projects it has executed..
"In fact the company is in a shambles. It does not have money. It is no longer stable. The government has withdrawn a number of projects from it," he said.
Shammari said the last payment they received was the salary of October 2015.
