JEDDAH, Jan 25 (IPS) - When Egyptian mechanical engineer Farid Hassanein received a phone call two years ago notifying him that his application for work in neighbouring oil-rich Saudi Arabia was approved, he thought his long-time dream of owning a car would be close at hand.
But after two years of working in the kingdom, he says he'd be elated if he could get out of the country "even on foot".
The 32-year-old works for a Saudi contracting company owned by a Saudi family that he says has subjected him to abuse and exploitation and turned his dreams upside-down.
"I made a big mistake by coming to this country where bosses are chauvinists and are allowed to abuse their workers and get away with it," he told IPS.
He complained that he and other employees are overworked, dehumanised and denied many basic rights.
Worse, for the past two years, he cannot leave the country because of what he described as a near slavery-like system in which his visa sponsor has confiscated his passport.
"This has been like hell," Hassanein said. "I feel totally trapped. I am constantly threatened that if I don't do as I am told, they can deport me or even deny me my payments. They say that if I want to go back home, I should pay them back the salaries I got for the nearly two years I spent here in constant work and with no annual leave."
Similar complaints are widespread among foreign workers in this country where millions from poorer nations come in search of jobs, attracted by the reputation of largesse and plentiful employment enjoyed by the affluent Arab state.
A Sudanese accountant who wished to remain unidentified also complained about employment conditions for migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.
He said he was hired as an accountant. For the first three months, he performed that task -- but only until the accounting workload began to ease. Then he was ordered to toil in a warehouse carrying boxes.
"I wasn't hired to lift boxes around. I came from my country as an accountant," he told IPS. "He [the owner] has my passport. I want to leave but he wants me to pay him back what I made for the time I worked for him."
Many here blame the employment system called the kafeel programme, which is similar to the U.S. non-immigrant skilled worker programme known as the H1B visa, given mostly to Indian nationals by U.S. computer companies.
But while the U.S. H1B system does limit options for employees, it doesn't give nearly full control to the employer over the life of their employee, as the kafeel system does.
Every foreign worker in Saudi Arabia has to have a sponsor. And there are many available.
As Saudi Arabia's oil wealth steadily accumulated, foreign workers flocked to the country to work for Saudis investing their windfall in businesses. Now, in the streets of Jeddah, Mecca and Madinah, grocery stores are staffed by Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers.
Mechanics are from neighbouring Egypt, Yemen and Sudan. Cybercafés, bookstores, herbal shops and other commercial businesses hire foreigners from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and other poor nations that suffer from unemployment.
Foreigners clean the streets, drive taxis, build houses and care for children.
Many different languages are heard on the streets here and a variety of ethnic restaurants cater to the massive migrant labour population.
The Saudi Labour Ministry estimates that foreigners account for 67 percent of the workforce and hold 90 to 95 percent of private-sector jobs. There are 8.2 foreign workers in a country of 25.6 million people, according to the "Saudi Employment Strategy", a report by the Labour Ministry.
The largest expatriate communities in Saudi Arabia include around one million to 1.5 million people each from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, and another 900,000 each from Egypt, Sudan and the Philippines.
Many of the workers interviewed by IPS acknowledged that the country has good labour laws, but also confirm what many human rights groups have long said, namely that these laws remain just "ink on paper".
They report fear of arrest and deportation, no access to medical care, long working hours without overtime pay, unpaid salaries and denial of paid vacation leave.
The U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch has in the past documented the failure of the Saudi government to enforce its own labour laws in the face of significant abuses of foreign workers by their employers.
The U.S. State Department Report on "Trafficking in Persons" said that "an indeterminate number of foreign workers" in Saudi Arabia "are subjected to conditions that constitute involuntary servitude".
The report says that domestic workers in the country are particularly vulnerable because some are confined to the house in which they work, unable to seek help.
Washington called on the Saudi government to expand public awareness campaigns to educate employers on the rights of foreign workers and the consequences of violating those rights.
But for Hassanein, calls from Washington or anywhere else ring hollow until his situation actually changes.
"America will shut its eyes over the worst abuses for money and for oil," he said. "My country [Egypt] has a government that cares only for money and power. They [the Saudis] give you sweet words spoken softly all the time but they do nothing to help us... All I want to do is leave and go home." (END/2007) -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>