The Ministry of Labor called on all concerned companies, individual sponsors and illegal expatriates to expedite correcting their residence and labor situations during the new amnesty which expires on the first day of next lunar year according to directives of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. In a press conference following the extension announcement today, Dr. Mufreh Al-Hagbani, Deputy Minister of Labor, said the extension came in response to requests by a number of foreign embassies of labor-supply countries, Saudi businessmen and expatriates who have cited a large turnabout to rectify the situation of illegals within relatively a short period of three months. He disclosed new advantages of the new grace period, citing that a small enterprise with no more than nine workforce may recruit up to four new expatriate laborers even though its crew would exceed nine so that it could transfer to become a Nitaqat-classified company and, thus, enjoy the advantages of the new zone it has fallen in. According to the new system, expatriate laborers will have the chance to transfer among entities of the same category according to three regulations as follows: the expatriate will be given only one chance to transfer his sponsorship, the total number of transferred expatriates should not exceed 20% of the total workforce in the upstream company and that the transference process should not push the downstream company to plunge below a green zone, the Deputy Minister said, noting that these steps are electronically processed. --More 21:06 LOCAL TIME 18:06 GMT تغريد
