Labor official wants laws eased for long-term expats

Abdullah Sadiq Dahlan JEDDAH: Foreign workers who have been living in Gulf countries for 25 years or more should be granted free iqamas (work/residency permits) or permanent resident status outside the sponsorship system, says Abdullah Sadiq Dahlan, the Kingdom’s representative to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization (ILO). In an interview with Arab News, Dahlan also suggested that the Kingdom reform the citizenship system to open the way for long-term legal residents to acquire naturalization. “This group of expatriates has become deeply rooted in our society and their return back to their respective countries has become a real problem for them,” he said. Dahlan described the new regulations to obtain Saudi nationality, issued about two years ago, as “pioneering and in favor of foreign manpower,” but he also said more needs to be done for long-term foreign workers. “We should further develop investment regulations for these foreigners in order to enable them to practice business and trade according to certain rules and without certain fees.” He said that foreigners working under the sponsorship of Saudis run more than half of the small establishments in the Kingdom. “We have to facilitate the process that will enable the foreigners who have stayed for a long time in the Kingdom to easily obtain Saudi nationality,” he said, also suggesting that such workers should be exempt from having to renew their iqamas every two years. Dahlan suggested that Saudi Arabia do more to retain and benefit from the labor skills that workers acquire when they spend so much time working in the Kingdom. “The GCC countries and Saudi Arabia cannot dispense with foreign manpower in the foreseeable future. We will continue to need thousands of doctors, pharmacists, engineers, technicians, experts and skilled labor to meet our demand,” he said. Regarding labor abuses, Dahlan said that “only” 20,000 to 30,000 labor disputes are reported annually in the Kingdom. “This is small when you take into account that there are about six million foreign workers in the country,” he said. “I can safely say that both the Saudi government and the Saudi private sector are keen to apply international labor laws on the foreign manpower. If there are any violations, they are mostly individual in nature. This happens in most parts of the world.” Dahlan stressed the fact that the Kingdom will not abide by international labor regulations that contradict Shariah, such as labor equality between men and women. “This agreement contains many articles which are against our values and traditions, not to mention Islam,” he said. On women’s employment, Dahlan said the atmosphere created by the reformist reign of King Abdullah, which puts particular stress on education, research and dialogue, have opened doors for the employment of women who are now involved in the process of decision-making in the commercial sector through their participation in the chambers of commerce, labor committees and companies. “Thousands of women are now working in the business sector.” The representative stressed that the Kingdom was keen to sign and endorse most of ILO’s agreements and said the last in this regard was the agreement preventing child labor. “Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries in the world that has no child laborers. The few children we see in the streets are not Saudis and are not workers; you can call them street children,” he said. The board of directors of the chambers of commerce and industry should also include representatives of foreign companies and foreign investors, he added. Asked about the impact of the current world financial crisis on the presence of foreign manpower in the Kingdom, Dahlan did not believe that it would have any adverse influence on them. “I do not expect any decisions to expel the millions of foreign workers from our labor market,” he said recalling the announcement made by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah a few months ago that $400 billion would be spent on government development projects over the coming years. “This meant that spending on the development projects would continue and so our need for foreign manpower would always be there.” He said the presence of foreign manpower in the Kingdom is an economic decision linked to the theory of demand and supply and not a political one. “Arab and Asian countries exporting manpower to the Kingdom should not have any worries in this regard,” he asserted. He, however, said the structure of foreign manpower might change in the future from an unskilled labor to a skilled one. Asked about the practice of not renewing the iqamas of certain job titles and the recruitment of doctors and engineers on worker visas, Dahlan said the issue needed to be resolved so that the job titles were commensurate with the qualifications in the system of iqama. He said the continued upgrading of labor laws would settle many complaints that were now being filed at labor offices and human rights organizations. Dahlan called for accepting the children of foreigners in government schools against certain fees or else allowing these foreigners to open their own schools so they were not forced to send their children home for studies.