130 Bangladeshi workers gathered in front of the Labor Office in Madina Sunday to present a formal complaint against their employer for “withholding residency permits and passports for 10 years”. Labor Office manager Abdul Khaliq Al-Ateeq took receipt of the complaint from representatives of the group. “The contracting firm employed us from Bangladesh to work at a hotel company, but since coming to the Kingdom we have had no holidays and we haven't been able to get our passports,” said Mawdoudi Muhammad Younis, one of the workers. “Some of us want to go home and see our families, and lots of us have been prevented from doing so for 10 years.” Younis said that the contractor had renewed the workers' iqama (residency permits) but locked them away with their passports to “prevent us leaving the country”. Naji Al-Ahmedi, the Labor Office inspection manager, said the problem lay in the “transfer of sponsorship between the old and the new sponsors”. “A dispute arose in the transfer of sponsorship,” Al-Ahmedi said. “The relevant authorities are working to enable the staff to travel abroad.”
