For 10 months, a company providing computer operations in King Fahd Specialist Hospital in Buraidah has not paid five employees because the Ministry of Health has delayed payment of SR2 million owed to the company, its director said. Al-Sayyid Khaled Othman, director of the company based in the Western Region, said salaries have not been paid because the Ministry of Health hasn't paid the company for 14 months. “The Ministry of Health has to pay us SR2 million and we have informed the Director of Health in Al-Qassim Region about this problem, but he said the delay is due to an administrative system for providing payments,” Othman said. Nasser Al-Hamoud, director of the region's Labor Office, said the relevant regulation does not allow the company to stop paying its employees. He added that the company was summoned so the matter could be investigated, but nobody showed up and another summons has been issued on May 23. Al-Hamoud stressed that the company's refusal to appear before the Labor Office would make it answerable to the law and that it would lose its authorization to operate. He demanded that company officials respond to Labor Office so the matter can be resolved as soon as possible. Muhammad Al-Dabbasi, spokesman of Al-Qassim Health Affairs, said his organization is not involved in the matter and that its employees are paid on time. “The crisis of the company's employees concerns the Labor Office. There is no employee who works for the Al-Qassim Health Affairs who has not received his salary. This company has signed a contract according to the regulations of the Ministry of Health. Whether it has any right or not depends on the authority concerned in the ministry, according to the terms and commitments between the two parties.” Al-Dabbasi warned that the company has no right to refuse to pay employees as a means of exerting pressure on the Ministry of Health. He added that there are two separate problems in this case, the employees and the company not being paid, and that authorities will look into them. Some employees said their employer has refused to pay salaries for ten consecutive months despite the existence of work contracts for three years. This has forced two employees to resign, leaving only five people on the job, they said. They added the transaction has been transferred from the emirate in Al-Qasim Region to that in Makkah Region, which in turn referred it to Al-Balad police station in Jeddah Governorate in order to summon company officials to stand before the Jeddah Labor Office.
