Philippine Embassy: ‘Nitaqat’ termination appealable

Sunday, July 17, 2011

THE Philippine Embassy in Riyadh on Saturday advised Filipinos being terminated in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) this early that they can still appeal their employment with their employers.

In an advisory, the Embassy told Filipino workers that their termination cannot be justified by their employers using the “Saudization” scheme as reason since it is not scheduled to take effect until September 2011.

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“These reports identify the Nitaqat system, under the new Saudization policy, as the reason for the recent incidents of termination of Filipino workers. The Saudi government has already announced that the Nitaqat system will start on September 11,” said the Embassy.

“Affected workers are given the chance to refute the ground(s) for their termination,” it added.

The Embassy said the advisory was issued due to the persistent reports on the termination of Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia in the past few weeks.

In addition, the Embassy noted that the termination is not part of the scheme since it is supposed to “honor existing work contracts.”

“The sanction for non-complying companies will be the non-renewal of work permits of foreign workers and not their illegal termination,” said the Embassy.

It said this is the reason why the work permits of foreign workers in red-coded companies will not be renewed and that the work permits of foreign workers in yellow-coded companies will be limited to six years.

Under the ‘Nitaqat’, the Saudi Ministry of Labor will be classifying some 300,000 local companies into four categories, namely, excellent and green (complying companies), and yellow and red (non-complying companies), with each of which will be required to employ a minimum number of Saudi citizens based on company size and the occupations of the company’s workers.

Yellow-coded companies will not be able to renew the work visas of foreign workers beyond six years, while red-coded companies will no longer be allowed to renew the work visas of their foreign workers.

On the other hand, excellent- and green-coded companies can recruit foreign workers already in Saudi from red- and yellow-coded companies without the consent of the workers’ sponsors and even if the workers have not worked for at least two years under their sponsors.

For red-coded companies, they are given until December 11 to improve their Saudization before restrictions come into effect, while yellow-coded companies have until March 11, 2012 to comply.

The Embassy then strongly urged Filipino workers, who may have been wrongfully terminated by their employers, to get in touch with the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (Polo) nearest their place of work (Riyadh, Jeddah and al-Khobar) in order to receive the necessary assistance in filing illegal termination complaints with the Saudi Labor Office.

The Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) had already placed the number of Filipinos that may be affected by the Saudization scheme at 90,000 out of the 1.2 million deployed in the KSA. (AMN/Sunnex)