Zain Anbar Okaz/Saudi Gazette JEDDAH – Advertisements on social networking sites seeking the release of domestic workers from their sponsors in return for amounts ranging between SR20,000 and SR25,000 are a kind of human trafficking punishable by the law and incriminated by the judiciary, according to judicial sources. The official spokesman of the Passport Department, Lt. Col. Ahmad Al-Lehaidan, said the department processes applications for transfer of sponsorship according to legal procedures. He said monitoring the black-market on the Internet for the release of domestic workers is the concern of other authorities. Legal adviser at the Human Rights Commission (HRC) Dr. Omar Al-Khouli said the commission had not received complaints from citizens harmed by the transfer of sponsorship of workers through the black-market. He said the role of the HRC in such cases is to intervene in order to tell citizens not to resort to conning and cheating to get a release. He suggested that domestic workers including maids and drivers be given additional time to rectify their status and prevent the appearance of a black-market that will exploit citizens' needs for domestic workers. Meanwhile, the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) renewed its demand to nullify the sponsorship system in order to guarantee the protection of workers from what it referred to as “Iqama traders”. It also recommended that a government commission, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Labor, be established to supervise the status of expatriate workers and nullify the role of the traditional sponsor (kafeel). It suggested naming this authority the “Commission for the Affairs of Expatriate Workers” with its headquarters in Riyadh. The supervisor general of NSHR branch in Makkah region, Dr. Hussein Al-Shareef, said the workers' dossier is a document that necessitates directing the efforts of the ministries and the authorities concerned to solve it speedily. The NSHR mentioned in its study that these measures only require that the Council of Ministers decision No. 166 issued nine years ago be activated. It calls for improvement of the humanitarian conditions of expatriate workers and rectifying the relationship of the worker with the employer as a work relationship and not a sponsorship relationship.
