News - Middle East: Human Rights Watch has called on the Saudi authorities to ensure that all migrant workers receive their wages, warning against the widespread occurrence of wage theft in the country.

Representatives of two construction companies in Saudi Arabia announced recently that migrant workers will get their long overdue unpaid wages, but gaps in the repayment scheme puts the payments at risk, Human Rights Watch said today.

Saudi authorities should ensure all former workers of these companies receive the full amount they are owed. The authorities should also put in place robust wage protection measures to address the rampant wage theft that migrant workers across the country experience.

In 2016, following a period of low oil prices and an economic downturn in Saudi Arabia, several companies failed to pay hundreds of thousands of migrant workers their wages, leaving them stranded. 

In late 2023, Saudi Oger’s Liquidation Trustees and Mohammad Al-Mojil Group (MMG)’s Bankruptcy Trustee, the trustees of the two Saudi-based construction companies, who faced such economic challenges and are currently in liquidation and bankruptcy respectively, announced that former employees should register for their payments.

Based on news sources and announcements from the migrants’ countries of origin, at least 21,000 workers just from the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are owed wages by these two companies.

The extent of unpaid wages is enormous. The Executive Court in Riyadh estimated in 2019 that the now-liquidated Saudi Oger owes an estimated SAR 2.6 billion (about US$693 million) in unpaid wages and other benefits to workers. 

In January 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed 27 migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Senegal who said they were formerly employed by Saudi Oger or MMG. Researchers also reviewed several workers’ salary sheets and checks. The workers said they had worked between 3 and 20 years in Saudi Arabia and were owed as much as SAR 80,000 (about $21,333) by one of the companies, including end-of-service benefits.

The cost to workers of employers’ non-payment of wages for extended periods can be catastrophic financially and mentally for them and their families. 

Ongoing research by Human Rights Watch has also documented extensive cases of wage theft by employers, with many recent workers returning home without what is owed to them. This wage theft remains widespread, Human Rights Watch found, despite Saudi authorities announcing various labor reform initiatives.

Source: Human Rights Watch Website