Government officials and attorneys have urged urgent measures to curb rising expatriate crimes. These measures should include redrafting foreign recruitment procedures, activation of prisoner exchange agreement and ensuring timely payment of salaries by the sponsors. The officials also called for the production of a good conduct certificate mandatory in the recruitment of foreigners, Al-Madina reported on Saturday. According to a recent statistics, the number of expatriate prisoners has gone up to 32,000, representing 70 percent of the total inmates in the Kingdom. Attorney Ahmad Al-Zahrani said the judges should implement Ministry of Interior's findings for adopting disciplinary sanctions as a substitute for serving time behind bars. The Director of Labor Office in Yanbu, Mohammad Qarwan, said friction between a worker and his sponsor may not be a leading factor in the commitment of crimes, as a number of studies have revealed that some expatriates were originally ex-convicts in their home countries. “If we look at those arrested in liquor, pornographic or prostitution crimes, we find that crimes were committed without the knowledge of their sponsors,” he said, adding that most crimes are committed by overstayers who come on Haj and Umrah visas. Engineer Khaled Al-Sehali, Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce in Yanbu, said delay in payment of salaries and poor treatment of expatriate labor are main causes of rise in expatriate crimes. “If sponsors and their employees comply with the terms and conditions of employment contracts and the right mechanism for this purpose is used, the rate of crimes committed by expatriate labor will be considerably slashed,” he said. Suleiman Al-Onaizi, head of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Tabuk, said lack of religious deterrents and poor professional qualifications of expatriate labor has led to the rising incidence of crime. Dr. Mefleh Al-Qahtani, Vice Chairman of the National Human Rights Society, called for quick settlement of cases involving expatriate labor and to seriously consider substitutes for sanctions leading to shorter prison time. __
