KOCHI: A group of around 150 people, comprising expatriates, gathered in front of the Jeddah branch of Saudi Oger, a major contracting company in Saudi Arabia, at 9 pm last week and set fire to a number of buses and heavy vehicles of the company.
Reason: They were denied salary for over six months. Though Malayalis account for over 50 per cent of Indians working in Saudi, according to official figures, there were only 300 Keralites among the 5,000 Indians stranded in Jeddah without food for over a week before the Ministry of External Affairs stepped in. The number of Keralites in blue collar jobs are fewer in Saudi Arabia, compared to workers from other countries.
“Though there are political and social reasons for the present crisis, the decline in the price of the crude oil is the major reason for the crisis,” said VK Vijayakumar, investment strategist at Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Service
Around 31,000 workers of the 58,000-strong workforce —with 77 per cent of them expatriates—filed complaints with the Labour Office over alleged non-payment of wages. But no steps were taken. To make things worse for the workers, the ministry slapped a ban on the group’s foreign recruitment and social security insurance services. Kerala contributes nearly 90 per cent of the 23.6 lakh Indians working in Saudi Arabia, according to the Kerala Migration Survey conducted by the Research Unit on International Migration at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.