An emotional video plea by an Indian migrant worker in Saudi Arabia to be allowed to go home to visit family has gone viral on social media.
Abdul Sattar Makandar was hired for a job driving trucks in Saudi Arabia via a recruitment agency in Mumbai. But now two years on, he says he’s been denied leave to visit his home in India, and claims the company hasn’t always paid him on time.
The video has once again prompted discussion about the issue of the working conditions for migrants in Gulf countries – although the facts of the case are heavily disputed.
Under Saudi law, foreign workers can’t leave the country without the permission of their employers – just one element of the Gulf system of kafala, which limits the rights of foreign workers.
Several recent cases – including the story of a domestic worker who had her arm chopped off – have prompted debate about working conditions for migrant workers in the Gulf.
The company denies the allegations, and the case might have been an unnoticed dispute between employer and employee, had Makandar not taped an emotional video which he sent to an Indian activist, Kundan Srivastava.
His employer, the Al Suroor United Group, strongly denies his story. They say that he was eligible for leave after two years of service and that he’s about six weeks short of that milestone. They also say he’s been paid on time and even given a bonus, and that he could resign from his job at any time.
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Makandar has been suspended from his job, and the video also seems to have landed him in jail. Earlier in the week he was detained under a Saudi law that forbids misrepresenting facts on social media.
Source: BBC Trending
