A number of Saudi women working for school canteens have complained that the contractors in charge of running canteens treat them poorly and pay them a meager monthly salary of SR300. The Ministry of Education has finally required contractors operating school canteens to hire Saudi women as a prerequisite for a contractor to get his contract with the ministry renewed. However, while the contractors do hire Saudi women, they pay them poorly. Al-Sharq daily met some of these women and spoke to them about their experiences. Zainab Tawfiq, who works for a local school canteen in Dammam, complained about the way her supervisor treats Saudi women. “He is an Arab expatriate and does his best to make us hate our jobs. But we have no option but to put up with this treatment because we are in desperate for any amount of money to help us meet our daily needs and feed our families,” she said. Zainab claimed the supervisor makes their job more difficult on purpose because he wants them to quit and leave. In fact, some of her colleagues did quit because they could not put up with his menacing behavior anymore. “Who is monitoring the performance and behavior of the supervisor? The authorities need to get involved and do something about the situation and put an end to this oppression,” she said. Unfair wage practices Fatimah Yaseen, another worker, said the contractor in charge of her canteen engages in unfair wage practices by paying employees a daily set wage instead of the number of hours worked. “When sales are strong, they pay us on the basis of actual work hours spent at the canteen, which are not more than three. They pay us SR10 an hour. So by the end of the month, most employees get SR600. But when sales are low, they pay us for the entire day and that comes out to SR300 a month,” she said. Yaseen and her colleagues sent a letter to the contractor and explained how the wages they were being paid were insufficient to get them by as a big chunk was spent on transportation. However, the company ignored their letter and did not offer a solution. “I searched for another job several times but with no luck. Every time we bring up the salary issue with the contractor, we get nothing but threats of firing us from the job. We are hardworking employees, clean, punctual and polite. But all these qualities seem to be of no importance for the contractor,” she stressed. Yaseen said it was rare for a Saudi woman working in the private sector to be paid so poorly. In other words, if the pertinent Education Administration were keeping a close eye on the performances of school contractors, the latter would pay them fairly. When asked to comment, Saeed Al-Bahis, spokesman for Eastern Province Education Administration, advised female employees working for school canteens to go to the labor office and talk with officials there because they are the ones responsible for setting the salaries of Saudis in the private sector. “The administration does not have the authority to fix a minimum salary for them,” he said.
