Clearly, charity is not among this individual’s strongest qualities…
An Indian driver, working for his Saudi employer for 18 years, is killed in a traffic accident. He ran into a wandering camel on the highway.
The Saudi employer refuses to sign the papers necessary to repatriate his driver’s remains – for over a year – because he wants the driver’s family to pay SR 40,000 (roughly $12,000) for the loss of his car.
In the end, the Saudi Ministry of Interior has forced the employer to do what he should have done in the first place. If one needs evidence that at least some Saudis have no respect for their employees, barely see them as human beings, here it is.
Sponsor forced to repatriate body
RIYADH: MD RASOOLDEEN, ARAB NEWS STAFFThe Ministry of Interior compelled a Saudi sponsor to repatriate the dead body of his Indian worker, for which he claimed SR40,000 as compensation from the family of the deceased.
The Saudi employer in Jazan demanded the money to release the body of the man who had worked for him for the past 18 years.
Krishnankurry Nair, a 55-year-old driver, died in a traffic accident in April last year at Al-Darb in Jazan when he hit a camel. He was working as a domestic driver. Nair hailed from Kidangoor, Kottayam, in the south Indian state of Kerala. He is survived by his wife and three children.
S.D. Moorthy, consul for labor welfare at the Indian Consulate in Jeddah, said yesterday that the sponsor demanded the compensation for the loss of his car. The diplomat explained that the sponsor has to sign a set of documents to process the repatriation of the body. He said Nair’s sponsor refused to sign the papers unless he was paid.
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March:02:2012 - 16:40
This goes deeper than just foreign employees. A common practice of Saudi hospitals is to keep newborn babies as hostages when their parents are unable to pay the medical costs. There was a highly-publicized example of this in 2010, where the baby had post-natal complications that were not fully covered by the parents’ insurance. The hospital refused to hand the baby over to his own parents until it was paid SR 196,000 (around $50k). The hospital eventually relented after some generous individuals offered to pick up the tab but it insisted that it was acting well within its rights. To this day, the press refuses to publish the name of the hospital! Needless to say, the hospital was never sanctioned for this in anyway and I am told it is a common practice among Saudi hospitals. The hilarious thing is that Saudi school books actually rail against the excesses of materialistic capitalism!
By the way, because Saudi Arabia is a country ruled by the Laws of God, as set out by 9th century Iraqi jurists (as opposed to evil man-made laws used in other countries), if the baby were to die in the hostage-taking hospital’s custody, the most the hospital would pay is about $25k (which the hospital will most likely manage to push onto a member of its staff).
March:02:2012 - 18:36
@Commenter: I wish I could say you exaggerate. Unfortunately, you do not.
March:05:2012 - 15:05
Excuse my stupid question, isn’t their any car insurance i Saudi ?
March:05:2012 - 20:39
@Neils: Yes, there is car insurance. Insurance in the KSA, in fact, is on the car, not the driver. The insurance should have covered the car, but assuming the owner had insurance, perhaps what the company paid was insufficient in his eyes and that’s why he went after the driver’s estate.
March:08:2012 - 04:34
@Commentater: *If* the baby were to die in the hospital’s custody, it will depend on the Qadi to establish whether it will be treated as murder or not – and that has implications on the subsequent dhiya and possible ta’zzir. Furthermore, the ‘dhiya’ you are bringing up is not fixed even in the Hanbali legal sources. Are you basing the number (25K$) on juristic patterns (which are pratically ignored in the Kingdom since there is no written code) or silver/gold prices as established by the Iraqi jurists?