Yousef Al-Mehaimeed
SOMETIMES I wonder if Saudis have a different view of the law than other people do. Many Saudis do not respect laws and blatantly ignore them, even when they travel abroad. Why they do that, I do not know. All I know is that when a Saudi violates the law and gets in trouble abroad, he asks the Saudi embassy in that country to step in and help.
The way we treat expatriate workers is strange. The Ministry of Labor warns us against giving electronic authorization to any person or recruitment agency abroad that is not accredited by the government of that country. It keeps sending us warning messages to stay clear of any activity abroad that might get us in trouble or make others accuse us of human trafficking. But I cannot help and wonder why some Saudis get themselves in trouble despite all of these warnings.
I do not understand why some Saudis directly deal with Indian, Bangladeshi or Pakistani workers instead of going through accredited agencies. Is it because Saudis have lost trust in local recruitment offices? Is it because Saudis have to go through a complicated recruitment process in the Kingdom and, therefore, choose to contract expatriate workers directly without intermediaries? The problem is that some Saudi recruitment offices do business with unauthorized offices abroad, something that is in violation of the Ministry of Labor’s laws.
This is a real problem as innocent Saudis and expatriate workers end up victims of fraud. Many expatriate workers pay a lot of money to get visas and work in the Kingdom. They spend all of their savings but later discover that they have been deceived. How are we going to regulate the relationship between employers, workers and local and foreign recruitment offices?
I am sure that most Saudis do not want to be accused of human trafficking and do not want to cause trouble. However, because of the current recruitment situation, some might opt to do business in their own way without the help of local recruitment offices. Overseas recruitment offices know the chaotic situation in relation to recruitment in our country and take advantage of it by deceiving Saudis and expatriate workers themselves.
