RIYADH — The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has called on the Makkah Passport Department to stop mistreating expatriates. In its detailed report, the NSHR's Makkah branch criticized the department for failing to implement the Ministry of Interior's instructions requiring officials to renew the validity of the residency permit (iqama) of an employee involved in a dispute with his employer. The report lambasted the department for banning expatriate employees from entering its offices just because their sponsors did not accompany them, Al-Watan daily reported. The newspaper quoted a NSHR source as saying that the department needs to rethink the way it treats expatriates. The NSHR Makkah branch's team met some of the expatriates who were standing outside the department building and registered their grievances. The expatriates complained to the team members about mistreatment from some passport officers and about the condition of the detention center. They said detention rooms reek and they are not appropriate. With some of the detained expatriates suffering from some sort of ailments, the crowding of the rooms make it a haven for many diseases, they added. The team recorded a case of an expatriate family which was deported only after two years of detention. The report pointed out that the department in charge of detention did not explain the reasons why they had detained the family for two years. The report also mentioned the consequences some employees have to suffer because their employers refuse to hand them their passports and allow them to transfer sponsorship. Some of them cannot add the names of their sons/daughters in their passports as a result of sponsors' refusal, according to the report. The report focused on the delay in implementing the verdicts of the Administrative Court and the absence of a clear and transparent mechanism for processing the cases of sponsorship involving sons of Saudi mothers and non-Saudi fathers. The NSHR said something should be done about the situation of the sons of Saudi mothers because, under the law, they are currently required to find a Saudi sponsor when they reach a certain age, despite the fact their mothers are Saudis. Those sons should be allowed to stay under their mothers' sponsorship and should not be required to change their profession or transfer their sponsorship. The report also noted that some expatriate workers have been badly affected by the absence notices (Huroob) filed by their employers as a way of getting back at the employees. There is no clear-cut mechanism coordinating work between Makkah Passport Department and Makkah Labor Office regarding false absence notices or those notices filed by employers just to hurt their employees, the report said.
