Lately, I have begun to get the
impression that the company I work for has a whole department devoted
specifically to slowly driving the people who work for it mad. The housing situation, and there response to
it (or lack there of) is just one example.
Much more serious, is the complete control the company has over the
employees and there ability to leave.
Currently, I am living in a state of
limbo. They have my passport so that
they can process my iqama, which is basically the equivalent of a green card in
the US. It takes most other companies
one to two weeks to process an iqama. My
company tells us it will be four to six weeks, but most people I have talked to
say it is never less than two months.
There is a girl from Canada who has been waiting for over 5 months
now. Apparently, a Canadian ambassador somehow (probably
inadvertently) insulted a Saudi Prince, and now it's taking three times as long
as normal to process visas from Canada. I need my iqama to open a bank account
here in Saudi, and generally, the company encourages you to hold on to your
iqama, and they permanently keep your passport.
I am planning on sending my iqama back to them as soon as I have opened
my bank account, in exchange for my passport.
You can only ever have one or the other, but not both, company policy. Currently, I am worried that I will not get
my iqama processed before Ramadan, and since most Saudis don't work, or work
very little during Ramadan, it is unlikely to be processed after Ramadan
starts. At the end of Ramadan is the Eid
Holiday, which is a national holiday, and means two weeks of paid vacation for
me. The problem is, without an iqama, I
can't get a re-entry visa, and without a re-entry visa, I can't leave the
country. So that means it is increasingly likely that I will have to spend two
weeks alone in my apartment.
Most of the other teachers are planning on leaving the country because those who have been with the company all year have 30 days of paid leave in addition to the two weeks of Eid Holiday. Up until about a week ago, everyone was supposed to get two weeks of paid leave for the Eid Holiday weather they were in the country or not. Now, you must "fingerprint" in (our way of punching the time clock) on the day before and the day after Eid in order to get the full 2 weeks paid. If you check in on one day either before or after Eid, but not both, you will only get one week of paid leave, but can take the other one as unpaid leave if you want. This means that people who have 30 days leave saved up for the year, can leave on vacation but depending on if they took the thirty days before, or the thirty days after Eid, will have to return to Saudi Arabia either two weeks into their vacation, or two weeks early from their vacation, to collect full benefits. The company made this change after they had already made everyone request their days off for the summer, and booked peoples flights.
Most of the other teachers are planning on leaving the country because those who have been with the company all year have 30 days of paid leave in addition to the two weeks of Eid Holiday. Up until about a week ago, everyone was supposed to get two weeks of paid leave for the Eid Holiday weather they were in the country or not. Now, you must "fingerprint" in (our way of punching the time clock) on the day before and the day after Eid in order to get the full 2 weeks paid. If you check in on one day either before or after Eid, but not both, you will only get one week of paid leave, but can take the other one as unpaid leave if you want. This means that people who have 30 days leave saved up for the year, can leave on vacation but depending on if they took the thirty days before, or the thirty days after Eid, will have to return to Saudi Arabia either two weeks into their vacation, or two weeks early from their vacation, to collect full benefits. The company made this change after they had already made everyone request their days off for the summer, and booked peoples flights.
Screwing with vacation time is one thing,
but a lot of people schedule their holidays around professional
development. One girl I know had planned
to go to Mexico to earn her CELTA certificate in a six week accelerated
program. She told the company about her
plans a year in advance, and they were approved verbally, and also in an email. However, when she requested the time off,
which overlaps with the last week of school by only 3 days, all of which are
after all exams and classes are over, and are only for reporting grades, which
she has already submitted. They denied
her leave. They told her that if she
left early to attend this session, which would actually benefit them by giving
her an advanced certification and make their hiring statistics look good, they would not pay her for any of her accumulated time off. She would have to take the whole six weeks as pay without leave, and would loose her 30 days of accrued paid vacation. Absolutely crazy.
Another guy recently found out that his mother has a terminal form of cancer. He requested leave, but because it was four weeks before the summer holidays officially start, they only granted him one week. It takes about 2 days to travel to his home from Saudi, and about 2 days to return, so they are basically giving him 3 days at home. Only it took them about two weeks to return his passport to him so he could leave in the first place, so now, he will leave for a week and then have to return to Saudi for about a week, and can then leave on his 30 days of accrued leave, which will now only be 23 days, and take two more days to travel back home again. Absolutely crazy.
But it is no where near as bad as the story I heard of the girl whose mother died. She wanted to go back for the funeral, but had to wait for the company to send her her passport. She waited a week, and still no passport, so the family at home postponed the funeral for her for two weeks. She waited, and still no passport. Eventually the family couldn't wait any longer and had to have the funeral without her. Six weeks after that, a total of 9 weeks from when she originally requested to leave, the company finally sent her her passport.
Apparently, the reason the company keeps peoples passports, and makes us apply for individual rather than multiple entry/exit visas is to prevent teachers from coming, working for a few months, and then disappearing. I have heard that it is typical for Muslims to use the opportunity of teaching to earn enough money to travel to Mecca and Medina, perform Hajj, and then return home, suddenly, and without informing the company at all. While I'm sure that has happened from time to time, I think the strict rules on leaving and not having control of your own passport, and the company constantly changing their minds about allowing or not allowing vacations has in fact had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than making teachers want to stay, everyone is now so paranoid at the thought of not being able to leave if they need to, that they constantly apply for exit visas, which are good for 3 months, just so that they can always have their passports with them and an exit visa in case they need to leave for an emergency.
Another guy recently found out that his mother has a terminal form of cancer. He requested leave, but because it was four weeks before the summer holidays officially start, they only granted him one week. It takes about 2 days to travel to his home from Saudi, and about 2 days to return, so they are basically giving him 3 days at home. Only it took them about two weeks to return his passport to him so he could leave in the first place, so now, he will leave for a week and then have to return to Saudi for about a week, and can then leave on his 30 days of accrued leave, which will now only be 23 days, and take two more days to travel back home again. Absolutely crazy.
But it is no where near as bad as the story I heard of the girl whose mother died. She wanted to go back for the funeral, but had to wait for the company to send her her passport. She waited a week, and still no passport, so the family at home postponed the funeral for her for two weeks. She waited, and still no passport. Eventually the family couldn't wait any longer and had to have the funeral without her. Six weeks after that, a total of 9 weeks from when she originally requested to leave, the company finally sent her her passport.
Apparently, the reason the company keeps peoples passports, and makes us apply for individual rather than multiple entry/exit visas is to prevent teachers from coming, working for a few months, and then disappearing. I have heard that it is typical for Muslims to use the opportunity of teaching to earn enough money to travel to Mecca and Medina, perform Hajj, and then return home, suddenly, and without informing the company at all. While I'm sure that has happened from time to time, I think the strict rules on leaving and not having control of your own passport, and the company constantly changing their minds about allowing or not allowing vacations has in fact had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than making teachers want to stay, everyone is now so paranoid at the thought of not being able to leave if they need to, that they constantly apply for exit visas, which are good for 3 months, just so that they can always have their passports with them and an exit visa in case they need to leave for an emergency.
If leaving for vacation is hard, leaving
for good is even harder. It's so complicated and difficult, that teachers usually do one of two things: renew their contract just to avoid the hassle of finally signing out, or get an exit visa for "vacation", wait until the end of a month when they get paid, and then just leave and never come back. I think you will understand why this later option is so appealing after reading the following story of how complicated it is simply to end a contract.
One woman here runs a school for underprivileged children in Ethiopia called English Alive. Funding was low this year, so she came to Saudi to work for 6 months in order to have money to pay the salaries of the teachers working at her school. Her contract originally ended May 30th. The university requested that she stay an extra week, until the 6th of June so that she could help proctor exams and grade the essays on the final exam (as it turns out, the final exam was on May 27th and there was no essay on it.) She agreed to stay on that extra week, even though it would give her only one week once she arrived to prepare for final exams at her own school and organize and run the graduation ceremony there. Then last week, when she was trying to get written confirmation of the verbal agreement to stay an extra week that they had made two month prior, they told her that she would not be leaving on the 6th if she stayed. Or even the 7th or the 8th. She would have to stay in Riyadh for 7 working days beyond her contract date, unpaid, in order for them to process all of the final paperwork, which actually works out to 2 weeks because of when the weekend falls. This would mean she would miss all of her own school's exams and graduation and end of the year events, not to mention having to tell her husband and two children that are crying for her every night that she would not be home for another month or more. She obviously didn't want to do that. So last weekend she went to Riyadh to try to start the process early and be able to leave as soon as possible, perhaps even going back to the original contract end date if that was necessary. She sat in the office for three hours before they bothered to notice her there at all, then with only 15 minutes left in the work day, she spoke with someone. He told her that the process absolutely takes two weeks and can't be any shorter, and can't start before the end of your contract date, because it has to do with settling how much pay they owe you, which can't be calculated until you stop earning pay, etc.. His solution was that she resign now, on the spot, on May 23rd, and she may be able to be on a flight out by June 6th. Of course, if she resigned that day, she would not get any of her benifits, or the return flight payed for since she would have breached her original contract.
After arguing with the man until closing time, he left with no resolution, and she stayed behind in the empty lobby to wait for a taxi. She couldn't help it, it was just so frustrating she began to cry. Thinking she was alone, she didn't bother holding back the tears. Two men in thobes who were preparing to leave saw her there and wanted to know what was wrong. At first she just shrugged and tried to stop crying and wave them on their way, but they wouldn't be dissuaded. Rather then tell the whole story she just told them curtly that they would cry if they worked for the company too. As it turns out, they did happen to work for the company. In fact, it was the vice president of human resources and another equally important man. They brought her up to their office, which was lined with oriental rugs and pillows and had her tell them the whole story. By the end, the man seemed outraged at how she had been treated, and told her not to worry, that he would sort it all out, and since he was coming down that weekend to look at alternative accommodations, he would bring her her passport and ticket and exit visa with him when he came so she could leave right away. Obviously, she was grateful. But having worked for the company for six months now, she was also wary. She had been promised many things that had never happened.
Things looked pretty promising at the beginning of the week. On Sunday, she emailed her new buddy the vice president of human resources to thank him and reconfirm his promise to bring her her passport and necessary documents on the weekend. He responded and reconfirmed, and even copied her on an email to the man she had argued with to buy her a ticket for June 6th. She waited to hear from him again toward the end of the week about when he would be coming on the weekend, since she wanted to be sure to be home when he arrived. We get two shopping trips on Friday and Saturday to special malls, and they leave in the early afternoon and don't return until the late evening so she wanted to know when he was coming to know which trip she should take. She emailed him on Wednesday with no response. She emailed again on Thursday morning, and by Thursday afternoon with still no response, she was starting to worry. So she tracked down his phone number and tried calling him. No answer. She tried texting him. No response. It's hard not to lose hope when your one chance to leave the country on time seems to be falling through.
Then, on Friday ten minutes before the bus to the mall left, he called her and asked her to meet him at 3:30 the Tamimi, a supermarket in Al Khobar where the bus drops us off and picks us up each Friday. Elated, she threw on her abaya (that's one great thing about the abaya, you can wear anything underneath and be ready in 2 minutes) and hopped on the bus with us. When the bus arrived at 3:27, she texted him to let him know she was there and then settled in to wait in the air conditioned front lobby of the store. At 3:45 she tried to call him and got no answer. She waited unitl 4pm, then tried calling again. No luck. She waited some more, calling or texting every 15 minutes until 6:30, when she finally decided she had waited long enough. By now, she was preparing for the worst. It was extra frustrating because why on earth would someone call and ask to meet you just 45 minutes before the meeting, and then not show up? Not only that, to not call or anything? I tried to make her feel better by pointing out that there was a very good chance he had been in an accident, given the frequency of accidents around here, before realizing that suggesting someone may be seriously injured or dead is not the best way to brighten the mood.
Turns out, someone had died. The man's nephew in Paris. He called her at 10pm on Saturday evening, apologizing for missing the meeting and explaining the situation. He went on for 10 minutes before mentioning that he was outside the apartment building with her passport and exit visa. Again, she threw on her handy abaya and went to collect he ticket to freedom. Only, sadly, her ticket was not among the papers he gave her. He told her they were still working on the tickets, but promised they would email her with the details as soon as they purchased them.
In fact, they did email her on Sunday night. The internet is shotty at best and when she came home from work, she saw that she had an email with the subject: Ticket # 53902850. She tried to open it, but after waiting about 10 minutes and refreshing and restarting a few times, she finally gave up and went to the dentist to have a root canal done before returning to Ethiopia. When she got home she saw that there were two new messages, and was finally able to open them. Apparently, the first email was asking her to confirm that the flight they had reserved was correct so they could book it. This was sent to her yahoo email account on Sunday morning, but since the University blocks gmail and yahoo and hotmail and all third party email addresses (which the company is aware of), so she wasn't able to get it until she arrived home from the dentist at 10:30pm. Then there was another email from that afternoon around 2pm saying URGENT! We need to book the flight and if you don't email back with confirmation it won't be the companies fault that you can't get on the flight you want. Apparently no one thought to try her University email, or if it was that urgent, to pick up the phone and call her. The third email was letting her know the first flight was now fully booked, and asking for confirmation for a flight that left June 7th at 3am. She wrote saying that was fine.
Now all that is left is to sort out banking details for the final pay. They want her to send bank details for a bank in Ethiopia they can sent her final pay to. She does't want to do that for two reasons, one she doesn't trust that they will, in fact, pay her once she has left the country, and two, when they send your money directly to a foreign bank, the company uses their own exchange rate, which is considerably worse than the rate at normal banks. The company told her that her bank account in Saudi will close immediately when she leaves. Having been told many things in the past by the company that turn out to be completely untrue, she asked the bank herself if that was true. The bank told her that they only close the account after three months of inactivity, or if she herself asks them to close it. So, in theory, it would be easier for her to have the money sent to her Saudi bank account, and then have an Ethiopian friend here withdraw the money for her and send it through her normal channels, a man who travels back and forth between Ethiopia and Saudi every month, bringing money from expats home to their families. She is struggling now to get them to agree to this.
So now we wait, in hopeful optimism to see if she will in fact be issued a ticket at 3am on the 7th, with all her bonuses and final pay sent to the right bank account. I'm looking forward to what I'm sure will eventually be my own fight to leave the country at the end of my contract next year. My contract technically ends on August 30th, 2014. I know that Grad School will likely start the week before that, and I will need at least a week before that to pack up and move once I get home. My original plan was to use my saved days of accrued leave and exit the country on July 30th or before. Something tells me I need to start fighting now if I'm going to actually be able to leave the country in time next year.
One woman here runs a school for underprivileged children in Ethiopia called English Alive. Funding was low this year, so she came to Saudi to work for 6 months in order to have money to pay the salaries of the teachers working at her school. Her contract originally ended May 30th. The university requested that she stay an extra week, until the 6th of June so that she could help proctor exams and grade the essays on the final exam (as it turns out, the final exam was on May 27th and there was no essay on it.) She agreed to stay on that extra week, even though it would give her only one week once she arrived to prepare for final exams at her own school and organize and run the graduation ceremony there. Then last week, when she was trying to get written confirmation of the verbal agreement to stay an extra week that they had made two month prior, they told her that she would not be leaving on the 6th if she stayed. Or even the 7th or the 8th. She would have to stay in Riyadh for 7 working days beyond her contract date, unpaid, in order for them to process all of the final paperwork, which actually works out to 2 weeks because of when the weekend falls. This would mean she would miss all of her own school's exams and graduation and end of the year events, not to mention having to tell her husband and two children that are crying for her every night that she would not be home for another month or more. She obviously didn't want to do that. So last weekend she went to Riyadh to try to start the process early and be able to leave as soon as possible, perhaps even going back to the original contract end date if that was necessary. She sat in the office for three hours before they bothered to notice her there at all, then with only 15 minutes left in the work day, she spoke with someone. He told her that the process absolutely takes two weeks and can't be any shorter, and can't start before the end of your contract date, because it has to do with settling how much pay they owe you, which can't be calculated until you stop earning pay, etc.. His solution was that she resign now, on the spot, on May 23rd, and she may be able to be on a flight out by June 6th. Of course, if she resigned that day, she would not get any of her benifits, or the return flight payed for since she would have breached her original contract.
After arguing with the man until closing time, he left with no resolution, and she stayed behind in the empty lobby to wait for a taxi. She couldn't help it, it was just so frustrating she began to cry. Thinking she was alone, she didn't bother holding back the tears. Two men in thobes who were preparing to leave saw her there and wanted to know what was wrong. At first she just shrugged and tried to stop crying and wave them on their way, but they wouldn't be dissuaded. Rather then tell the whole story she just told them curtly that they would cry if they worked for the company too. As it turns out, they did happen to work for the company. In fact, it was the vice president of human resources and another equally important man. They brought her up to their office, which was lined with oriental rugs and pillows and had her tell them the whole story. By the end, the man seemed outraged at how she had been treated, and told her not to worry, that he would sort it all out, and since he was coming down that weekend to look at alternative accommodations, he would bring her her passport and ticket and exit visa with him when he came so she could leave right away. Obviously, she was grateful. But having worked for the company for six months now, she was also wary. She had been promised many things that had never happened.
Things looked pretty promising at the beginning of the week. On Sunday, she emailed her new buddy the vice president of human resources to thank him and reconfirm his promise to bring her her passport and necessary documents on the weekend. He responded and reconfirmed, and even copied her on an email to the man she had argued with to buy her a ticket for June 6th. She waited to hear from him again toward the end of the week about when he would be coming on the weekend, since she wanted to be sure to be home when he arrived. We get two shopping trips on Friday and Saturday to special malls, and they leave in the early afternoon and don't return until the late evening so she wanted to know when he was coming to know which trip she should take. She emailed him on Wednesday with no response. She emailed again on Thursday morning, and by Thursday afternoon with still no response, she was starting to worry. So she tracked down his phone number and tried calling him. No answer. She tried texting him. No response. It's hard not to lose hope when your one chance to leave the country on time seems to be falling through.
Then, on Friday ten minutes before the bus to the mall left, he called her and asked her to meet him at 3:30 the Tamimi, a supermarket in Al Khobar where the bus drops us off and picks us up each Friday. Elated, she threw on her abaya (that's one great thing about the abaya, you can wear anything underneath and be ready in 2 minutes) and hopped on the bus with us. When the bus arrived at 3:27, she texted him to let him know she was there and then settled in to wait in the air conditioned front lobby of the store. At 3:45 she tried to call him and got no answer. She waited unitl 4pm, then tried calling again. No luck. She waited some more, calling or texting every 15 minutes until 6:30, when she finally decided she had waited long enough. By now, she was preparing for the worst. It was extra frustrating because why on earth would someone call and ask to meet you just 45 minutes before the meeting, and then not show up? Not only that, to not call or anything? I tried to make her feel better by pointing out that there was a very good chance he had been in an accident, given the frequency of accidents around here, before realizing that suggesting someone may be seriously injured or dead is not the best way to brighten the mood.
Turns out, someone had died. The man's nephew in Paris. He called her at 10pm on Saturday evening, apologizing for missing the meeting and explaining the situation. He went on for 10 minutes before mentioning that he was outside the apartment building with her passport and exit visa. Again, she threw on her handy abaya and went to collect he ticket to freedom. Only, sadly, her ticket was not among the papers he gave her. He told her they were still working on the tickets, but promised they would email her with the details as soon as they purchased them.
In fact, they did email her on Sunday night. The internet is shotty at best and when she came home from work, she saw that she had an email with the subject: Ticket # 53902850. She tried to open it, but after waiting about 10 minutes and refreshing and restarting a few times, she finally gave up and went to the dentist to have a root canal done before returning to Ethiopia. When she got home she saw that there were two new messages, and was finally able to open them. Apparently, the first email was asking her to confirm that the flight they had reserved was correct so they could book it. This was sent to her yahoo email account on Sunday morning, but since the University blocks gmail and yahoo and hotmail and all third party email addresses (which the company is aware of), so she wasn't able to get it until she arrived home from the dentist at 10:30pm. Then there was another email from that afternoon around 2pm saying URGENT! We need to book the flight and if you don't email back with confirmation it won't be the companies fault that you can't get on the flight you want. Apparently no one thought to try her University email, or if it was that urgent, to pick up the phone and call her. The third email was letting her know the first flight was now fully booked, and asking for confirmation for a flight that left June 7th at 3am. She wrote saying that was fine.
Now all that is left is to sort out banking details for the final pay. They want her to send bank details for a bank in Ethiopia they can sent her final pay to. She does't want to do that for two reasons, one she doesn't trust that they will, in fact, pay her once she has left the country, and two, when they send your money directly to a foreign bank, the company uses their own exchange rate, which is considerably worse than the rate at normal banks. The company told her that her bank account in Saudi will close immediately when she leaves. Having been told many things in the past by the company that turn out to be completely untrue, she asked the bank herself if that was true. The bank told her that they only close the account after three months of inactivity, or if she herself asks them to close it. So, in theory, it would be easier for her to have the money sent to her Saudi bank account, and then have an Ethiopian friend here withdraw the money for her and send it through her normal channels, a man who travels back and forth between Ethiopia and Saudi every month, bringing money from expats home to their families. She is struggling now to get them to agree to this.
So now we wait, in hopeful optimism to see if she will in fact be issued a ticket at 3am on the 7th, with all her bonuses and final pay sent to the right bank account. I'm looking forward to what I'm sure will eventually be my own fight to leave the country at the end of my contract next year. My contract technically ends on August 30th, 2014. I know that Grad School will likely start the week before that, and I will need at least a week before that to pack up and move once I get home. My original plan was to use my saved days of accrued leave and exit the country on July 30th or before. Something tells me I need to start fighting now if I'm going to actually be able to leave the country in time next year.
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