Thousands of Pakistani people and other Asian people are forced to live in open while hot summer blazes upon them. The reason for this is that their employers have disowned them due to the latest Work Permit Law changes in Saudi Arabia.
These people are trying to get their documents corrected and visit the Government offices on daily basis and when they become tired, they have no place to go, nothing to eat. They go to parks and the water reserved for trees is their drinking water. They don’t have anything to eat so they wait for someone to give them food. This has caused various diseases among them.
The problems started when employment laws were changed by the Government and then the people with whom they used to live asked them to leave the place. The relevant department asked all those workers who came on work permit visa and then switched to some other work rather than the job mentioned on their visa. They were given a time of three months and now the time is almost over.
Such people will have to face 2 years of jail along with 1 lac Saudi Riyal fine. Majority of the people already left the Kingdom and rest of the people are stuck there. Strong threat by Saudi Police has been issued for those who will provide shelter to such people who do not have the correction of documents certificate with them. Saudi Police arrested many such people and according to Saudi newspapers Dammam is host to a huge number of such Pakistani people who came on some other visas and were working there. 3rd July is the last day and such Pakistani people are in a lot of trouble. Deadline is very near and rush on offices is causing lots of trouble for these Pakistanis to get their documents corrected.
Due to the non-cooperative behaviour of their employers, they cannot even get an emergency visa to get back to their homeland and their troubles are ever increasing. Due to the lack of food and water they are forced to drink dirty water and food given to them by Saudi Arabian citizens and Palm trees are their only shelter from hot sun. Majority of them want to go back but they cannot do it because they are not in contact with their employers.
80 lac people were working in Saudi Arabia among which 20 lac were such cases mentioned above. After changes to immigration laws around 0.25 million people returned to their countries and around 0.45 million have their documents corrected.
Rest of them are in deep trouble and are stuck in the middle of nowhere. Warning has been issued once again by the Saudi immigration department that no relaxation will be given in such regard.
