Labor Office: Negligent officials will be held accountable JEDDAH – Nearly 70,000 government employees in the Kingdom skipped work on Wednesday, the last day of work before Eid Al-Fitr holidays, inspection tours by the Control and Investigation Board (CIB) have shown. Service seekers at the Jeddah Labor Office say they witnessed an unusual degree of employee absenteeism on Wednesday, while those employees who showed up tended to put off transactions until after Ramadan, Al-Madina Arabic daily reported, Thursday. Abdul Qadir Al-Ghamdi, Director of the Labor Office, justified the absence of employees by saying that some of them were taking their regular vacation. He added that “only a small number of service seekers came and their transactions were processed and completed by other employees”. Regarding the complaints of service seekers about the way they were treated by Labor Office employees, Al-Ghamdi said, “My office door is open to any citizen who feels that the processing of his transaction is being delayed. Those employees found negligent will be held accountable.” Fahd Al-Saqaf, a service seeker, described the situation at the Labor Office as “bad”. “This is not new. It has been happening every year over the past 15 years. It will continue like this unless it is dealt with. Labor Office employees have become professional in delaying transactions. You always hear phrases like ‘the employee in charge isn't here', ‘come tomorrow', ‘your transaction's missing some papers'. They give you these excuses over and over again until you get sick and tired and leave the office without finishing your transaction.” Mamdouh Al-Harbi, another service seeker, agreed that Labor Office employees procrastinate a lot and some transactions get delayed for a month. Akram Al-Khamisi, a service seeker, said, “Those trying to process papers at the Labor Office suffer a lot because of the negligence of employees. You'll always hear ‘system is down'. They tell you this so that you leave and don't ask them questions about your transaction. It's a very common phrase for employees there.” Ahmad Kambuyti, a service seeker, said, “Employees are absent from work all the time without proper justification. People's transactions get delayed as a result. But this is not the end of the story. Some employees do not treat service seekers politely and do not even show any interest in serving them. Many times we have to wait for hours and follow up our transactions for days, sometimes months, to have them processed when their processing time should only take a few minutes. I'm telling you nothing is going to change there. These red-tape measures have been there for years.” Aziz Al-Sulami said, “There are several sections of the Labor Office. For example, the section dealing with recruitment visas delays the processing of transactions more than any other section.” __
