Clashes have broken out between police forces and workers at an industrial free zone in Saudi Arabia’s Shia-populated and oil-rich Eastern Province during riots over unpaid wages.
Local sources, requesting not to be named, said the confrontation erupted on Wednesday morning after police tried to clear a gathering that workers from the AZMEEL Contracting & Construction Corporation had formed in protest over their unpaid salaries.
Workers at the corporation said that dozens of Saudi and foreign workers had not been paid for six consecutive months and negotiations with the management had gone nowhere.
Several people were injured and killed as Saudi regime forces fired shots to disperse the riot that took place in the Dhahran district.
Workers, in return, pelted police and AZMEEL officials with rocks. An unspecified number of vehicles, including a sport utility vehicle, were damaged as well.
Back in August 2016, employees at Riyadh-based building firm United Seemac, which mostly does roadwork for the Saudi government, said they had not been paid for at least five months, and Saudi authorities and officials from their embassies had done little to address their worsening situation.
“Nobody knows the situation for employees working at small companies. All the attention is on the big companies. It’s easy to ignore us because we are not so many people,” Mohammed Barr, an engineer who has been working at the company for two years, said at the time.
He added that big companies, including the Bin Ladin Group and Saudi Oger, “have a lot of power, so that’s why the governments and embassies know about their workers.”
“We might only be 500 people but that is not all we are. Our families rely on our money, so this is a problem for 500 families. Nobody knows about companies like ours. Nobody wants to take any action to help us,” Barr said.
“We just want to be paid and then allowed to leave, either for another job here or to return home to our countries,” he went on to say.
This picture shows a dead body following clashes between police and the AZMEEL Contracting & Construction Corporation workers over unpaid salaries in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on October 3, 2018. (Photo via Twitter)
...[ Continue to next page ]
Share This Post
