Forty percent of small construction firms in the Kingdom have stopped operating because thousands of expatriate workers were not able to rectify their status during the amnesty period.
The figures were released recently by Fahd Al-Hamadi, head of the national committee for construction at the Council of Saudi Chambers (CSC). “The seven-month time frame allocated for the correction process was not enough to rectify 20 years of errors,” said Al-Hamadi.
He said small firms find it extremely difficult to hire workers from outside, change their professions, or recruit from other construction companies. Larger firms recruit workers easily, he said.
Khalaf Al-Otaibi, president of the World Federation of Trade, Industry and Economics in the Middle East, said recently: “Forty percent of subcontracting small-scale construction businesses have stopped operating since the beginning of the inspection raids.”
Al-Otaibi said small and medium enterprises represent 75 percent of the entire construction industry in Saudi Arabia.
Small firms struggle to stay afloat
