A Ministry of Labor report published Friday said that exit and entry visas as well as work permits, profession changes and sponsor transfers would soon be “linked” to the Ministry of Interior. The report, which looked at several areas related to foreign labor in the Kingdom, said that 1,105 labor disputes were settled in the first nine months of the last Hijra year, and that Primary Labor Dispute Commissions had been set up in all regions of the country, while a High Commission for Labor Disputes was now in operation in Jeddah. An unstated number of companies, the report said, have been barred from recruiting from abroad for five years for falsifying the number of Saudi employees on their books in order to meet Saudization targets. According to the report, inspectors made in the first nine months of the last Hijra year 33,000 visits to enforce labor laws. The ministry issued 745,912 visas during the same period, 25 percent down on the same period for the previous year, while just over three million work permits were granted. The report said that the unified contract recruitment companies would soon begin operating following the recent completion of the list of the companies. Two Labor Offices for women are scheduled to be opened soon, one in Madina and the other in Asir, and more will be added to the offices already present in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam.
