Kafala’s Pakistani Victims
File Photo. Omar Saleem AFP
Controversial labor laws in Saudi Arabia are designed to make it harder for laborers to find alternate employment.
Earlier this month, prompted by media reports, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed over 8,500 Pakistani migrants were stranded in Saudi Arabia after their employers shuttered constructions projects and halted their salaries. But while Islamabad has pledged to provide monetary assistance to the economic migrants, it is refusing to take up the issue that helped create this crisis: the controversial
kafala system.
“It is primarily the responsibility of the companies involved to provide these workers with food rations,” a spokesman for the foreign affairs ministry told