Badea Abu Al-Naja Saudi Gazette MAKKAH — A team from the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has visited residences of cleaning workers in Makkah to deal with their ongoing strike that had led to pileups of garbage in the holy city's streets. The team also met with the officials of the contracting company to find out the reasons for the strike. It discovered that there was a delay in the renewal of the workers' residence permits (iqamas), stopping them from remitting money home. They had also not been paid on time and feared being arrested due to the inspection campaigns. The workers told the team that they did not trust the company because it had allegedly failed to fulfill promises made when they had gone on strike previously. The NSHR team recommended the workers be paid their salary dues and their iqamas renewed. They said it was necessary for the government to intervene to resolve the huge hike in the iqama renewal fee, which was SR750 a worker when the contract was signed with the cleaning company but has now reached SR3,150 following the Ministry of Labor's implementation of the Nitaqat system designed to improve Saudization levels. As Saudis are reluctant to work in the cleaning sector, the NSHR team recommended these companies are excluded from the Nitaqat system. Officials from the Human Rights Commission (HRC) also visited the cleaning company's quarters and met with workers and company officials. The head of the HRC branch in Makkah, Sulaiman Al-Zaydi, said the visit was to find out the reasons for the workers' strike and to discuss their rights with the company officials. The HRC, he added, would submit a detailed report to the concerned bodies. Makkah's garbage problem was alleviated on Sunday as cleaning workers took to the streets to collect garbage and clean out the neighborhoods. Makkah Municipality said more than 4,000 legal workers from the cleaning contractor were deployed. A committee represented by the Ministry of Interior and the municipality obliged the workers to begin work again because they had been paid to date. Makkah residents, who claimed the workers went on strikes periodically since the current cleaning company received its contract, reacted to the news with great relief. The head of Makkah's city council said the holy city was getting extremely dirty as cleaning workers had stopped working for a few days. Abdulmuhsen Al-Asheikh called on Makkah residents to collect garbage from the streets, especially as the city had to deal with the fallout of the correction campaign. He pointed out that the council had asked for help from the Jeddah Municipality, which provided some workers to assist in collecting garbage from Makkah's streets. He called on any contractor who could help deal with the situation to come forward. "The current cleaning contract is about to expire and there are plans to contract with five different cleaning companies that will be assigned different sections of Makkah," he said. Al-Asheikh pointed out that the city council has helped develop the new cleaning contracts to avoid all mistakes made by the current contractor. He believed that the correction campaign would benefit citizens, but there would be consequences that would need to be overcome through the cooperation of local residents. A source at the Makkah Municipality said the cleanliness problem was due to the complacency of the current cleaning contractor. He said: “The company owner is incapable of running the company and is not committed to the contract. He is currently outside the country and could not care less.” The source pointed out that Makkah Municipality had deducted around SR2 million from the contractor's dues over the past four years, but this has not improved the company's performance. Makkah Municipality has also contracted with other cleaning companies during the past two Haj seasons. Mahmoud Maghrabi, training and change management consultant, claimed the municipality was not doing enough to deal with the problem while cleaning workers were on strike. Makkah is large and has many rugged areas, he said, adding that the city should be divided into five sections, with each having its own cleaning company. "The municipality should also set up a holding company for these companies. The holding company should be completely independent of the municipality to do away with bureaucracy," he said. Meanwhile, Makkah residents have shown great solidarity in dealing with the increasing piles of rubbish. Many residents and their children were seen collecting garbage from the streets using the cleaning contractor's equipment. Some people were driving the trucks while others were collecting garbage or sweeping the streets. A large number of people from the Burmese community have also participated in the campaign along with 20 municipality employees. Jeddah Municipality has admitted to cleaning problems in many neighborhoods as many workers could not obtain their iqamas to legally work in the streets. Al-Jamiah and east Jeddah neighborhoods were experiencing garbage pileups. Jeddah Municipality spokesman Sami Nawwar said a number of cleaning company workers have remained in their homes because their residency statuses have not been corrected yet. He said the municipality has intensified cleaning operations around the clock to deal with the garbage in the streets.
