Saudi businessmen backed a call for extending the July 3 amnesty deadline during their meeting with the Saudi Labour Ministry officials yesterday.
Muhammad Al-Subhi, a businessman, said that the mechanisms used for normalisation were incorrect and disorganised. “The mechanisms were only announced six weeks after the start of the grace period. We therefore ask that the period be extended”, reported Arab News yesterday.
Meanwhile, at the meeting, Abdulmunim Al-Shehri, director general of the labour office, repeated certain concessions announced by the government, saying, the workers have the right to transfer their sponsorship, if their sponsors withhold their passports and residence permits.
“The amnesty is meant for certain categories of expats, like those who were reported to have run away, who absented themselves from work, violators among domestics, or those who overstayed in the Kingdom after performing the Hajj or Umrah,” he said.
Asked if some nationalities from Chad or Bangladesh, for example, are exempted from rectifying their status, he said: “This grace period is for all nationalities to correct any abnormalities in their status in general. But they must do so by the deadline.”
The July 3 amnesty deadline, decreed for illegal expatriate workers to normalise their work status or leave the Kingdom, is set to have widespread ramifications on several industries, including the labour-intensive date farming sector due to the shortage of workers.
Head of the Agricultural Committee in the Madinah Chamber of Commerce and Industry and member of the multipurpose Cooperative Society Administration, Hamid Bin Aisah Al-Faridi said, the date harvesting season this year would be hit hard since there would be a massive shortage of labour once the amnesty period ends.