JEDDAH — The Ministry of Labor and Social Development will take all necessary measures to ensure that Zahra Al-Barakati, who lost her hand while working in a factory here, receives all her rights, the ministry’s spokesman Khalid Aba Al-Khail said on Twitter.
He said the ministry’s representatives would visit the factory to make sure that it had all safety means in place to protect the employees, according to Al-Madina newspaper.
Al-Barakati lost her hand after damaging it by touching an electrical conveyor belt on instructions from her female boss. The spokesman did not identify the factory but said it would be closed down if it was found to be lacking in safety measures. “Al-Barakati will obtain all her legal rights,” he reiterated.
Al-Barakati started as a freshman at King Abdul Aziz University with rosy dreams of obtaining a university degree and then landing a job, which she hoped would help her support her sick mother who had been struggling to buy her medicines. Only so her dream has turned into a nightmare with Al-Barakati ending up with an amputated arm.
Al-Barakati was thrilled when she landed a production line job in one of the factories specializing in medical solutions in the industrial city of Jeddah. She was excited that she could divide her earnings to pay for her tuition and the treatment of her mother.
But her happiness did not last long. One day her supervisor asked Al-Barakati to clean the electrical circuits of an equipment, to which she said, this was a men’s job and she was not trained to do it.
The task also carried a high degree of risk, unlike the work she had been doing in the factory, which included monitoring the production process by screening the solutions, controlling the production lines and excluding damaged packages.
But the supervisor was adamant and even threatened Al-Barakati with punishment if she failed to obey her instructions. al-Barakati had no option but to follow the instructions. Unaware of the consequences of carrying out the task without proper training, she started cleaning the electrical circuits. But during the process, one of the circuits became live and the machine started running and cut off Al-Barakati’s arm. A female colleague rushed to her rescue and a Filipino worker turned off the electric supply.
According to Al-Barakati, the factory lacked any emergency exits and other of means of safety. After hours passed in anxiety and fear, she was finally carried outside the plant on a crane that was used to move cartons to trucks.
She was taken to King Abdulaziz University Hospital, after the emergency room in a public hospital in south Jeddah refused to take her case, where her arm was amputated.
The doctors in the ER wrapped the arm in transparent plastic and asked her to be transferred to another hospital. After four hours of continuous bleeding that almost stopped her heart, Zahra arrived accompanied by her arm to the new hospital that was able to provide preliminary aid and treatment and perform emergency surgery in an attempt to reconnect the amputated arm, but unfortunately, it did not respond as it was damaged by neglect.
A state of willful ignorance — as recounted Zahra — lasted 10 days or more from the factory officials who did not check on her in the hospital. The factory later sent a message through a worker that they intend to reward her with SR3,200 in an attempt to satisfy her. All this is was in addition to the threats by intermediaries that if she complained about the supervisor or revealed what happened then she would be denied even the possibility of treatment abroad, which were just promises to settle the issue.
Lawyer Khalid Abdul-Jabbar said: “The legal action in such cases is to go to the social insurance to review the financial rights and fully ensure the treatment of the worker who was injured in proportion to her condition, especially as it was under the umbrella of social insurance during her work.”
Al-Madina said the case was referred to social insurance because it was the body responsible for paying compensation in cases of work injury.
