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Expat women abusing domestic helper visas

June 5, 2013

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Jeddah, Jun 5: Hundreds of expatriate housewives who overstayed their Haj and Umrah visas are now becoming domestic workers in name only so that they can stay in the Kingdom with their husbands, Arab News has discovered.

They are exploiting a Saudi government concession that allows Umrah or Haj pilgrims who came to the Kingdom prior to July 2008, to become domestic workers. In reality, they do not work as domestic workers in the homes of their employers, the newspaper has found.

The concession is part of a raft of measures announced by the Kingdom last month for illegal workers to regularize their work status or go home. They have until July 3, the end of a three-month grace period, to do so.

This option has allowed foreign women, who arrived in the Kingdom on Haj or Umrah visas to join their husbands in Makkah, Madinah and Jeddah, as legal employees.

The domestic help sector in the Kingdom is dominated by Indonesia followed by the Philippines, who together account for nearly 70 percent of the total domestic help in the Kingdom.

In the current regularization process, only a few women from these two East Asian nations are turning up at the passport office in Jeddah’s Rehab district to provide their biometric details before applying for an employment visa.

Hundreds of women from Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Ethiopia are converging on Rehab district to process their documents.

Husbands who could not obtain family visas because they lack the required academic qualifications have opted for this easy way to keep their wives in the Kingdom.

According to Ministry of Haj statistics up to the end of November 2012, 25,000 Umrah pilgrims failed to return to their countries. Pakistan stood top of the list with 9,752 pilgrims, followed by Egypt with 3,519.

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Agencies
May 22,2020

Riyadh, May 22: The family of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Friday said that they forgave his killers. Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had written columns critical of Saudi Arabia, was brutally killed in October 2018, allegedly at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

“In this blessed night of the blessed month [of Ramadan] we remember God’s saying: If a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah,” Jamal Khashoggi’s son Salah Khashoggi said in a tweet. “Therefore, we the sons of the Martyr Jamal Khashoggi announce that we pardon those who killed our father, seeking reward [from] God almighty.”

The legal outcome of this announcement is not yet clear. Earlier, Salah Khashoggi said he had “full confidence” in the judicial system, and that the accused were trying to exploit the case.

Jamal Khashoggi’s body was said to have been dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and disposed of elsewhere, but his remains were never found.

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News Network
May 5,2020

Dubai, May 5: Saudi Arabian prosecutors have ordered the arrest of a Saudi citizen for insulting an Asian expatriate and abusing him for not embracing Islam.

A video went viral online showing the expat, apparently with little knowledge of the Arabic language, being insulated by an Arabic-speaking man who does not appear in the clip, for having not embraced Islam and for not fasting.

A monitoring centre affiliated with the public prosecution examined the video the content of which “shows the citizen’s use of abusive words against the Asian resident on the pretext of inviting him to Islam,” the prosecution source said.

“The public prosecution closely follows up whatever infringes rights of citizens and residents including harm to their dignity and legal rights regardless of pretexts of such infringement,” the source added.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Dubai, Jul 28: Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) (ADCB.AD) is letting go hundreds of employees, sources said, the latest in a round of lay-offs by regional banks as pressure mounts to cut costs amid lower oil prices and the coronavirus crisis.

The UAE’s third-biggest lender is laying off 400 employees, two sources familiar with the matter said, after it had committed to not cutting staff because of the crisis.

In a statement, a spokesman said ADCB had pursued efficiency over the last decade by managing out its lowest underachievers after regular reviews, while ensuring talent was deployed in high-growth areas, such as digital banking.

“A certain number of redundancies are therefore expected every year in the normal course of business,” the bank spokesman added.

The sources said the cuts would involve ADCB’s consumer business and several in top management were among those being let go. One source said the bank was looking to close 20 branches.

In March, ADCB had declared, “No employee will be made redundant during 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

UAE banks have been hit by government measures to rein in the spread of the virus, forcing many businesses to shut temporarily.

Last week, Dubai’s largest bank, Emirates NBD, reported a slump of 58% in profits. In June, sources told Reuters the bank started a new round of hundreds of lay-offs.

In May, ADCB reported a fall of 84% in first-quarter net profit as it took impairments of $292 million on debt exposure to troubled hospital operator NMC Health and payments group Finablr.

It was a major lender, with an exposure of about $981 million, to NMC Health, which went into administration this year after months of turmoil following questions over financial reporting.

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