YANBU – Yanbu Police arrested a gang whose members were involved in smuggling undocumented workers from Jeddah to villages and governorates in the western region. The members charged SR1,500 for taking an illegal worker from Jeddah to Yanbu Al-Nakhl – SR1,000 for the Saudi driver and SR500 for the Indonesian broker. Yanbu Police noticed a large number of workers in several places in the governorate. When arrested, some of the workers claimed that they had been transported from Tabuk by a Saudi driver. Police arrested one of the smugglers who confessed that the gang members dropped off many undocumented workers in different villages in Yanbu so they would get deported to their home countries faster. Col. Fahd Al-Ghanam, spokesman for Madinah Police, said the gang members chose Yanbu because deportation procedures take considerably less time than in Jeddah.
