Jubail workers deny being paid arrears

Twenty Indian workers here have accused a local company of not paying their salaries for six months and have appealed for help so that they can go home.
“We are 20 Indian employees stranded here at Bader H. Al-Hussaini & Sons in Jubail. The company has not given us our salaries, food, water or any means of support for the past six months,” one worker told Arab News on Monday.
Bader Al-Hussaini, the chief executive officer and owner of the company, told Arab News that he owes the workers four months' wages. “We have just paid them one salary this morning. We will pay them two salaries this week and the fourth salary as soon as we receive a check for about SR600,000 from an authority in Jubail for which we have done work.”
However, when he was told that he would be quoted in Arab News, he said: “Ignore what I have just said, everything at the company is all right. You can’t publish this information.”
The workers have disputed Al-Hussaini’s claim. When contacted again on Monday afternoon, they said they had not received any money from the company. “We’ve been at the company since this morning. Now it’s the end of the day. We were not even informed that we would be paid, which means there was no intention to pay us.”
“We are helpless and cannot support ourselves and our families. We want to go back to India but they do not want to send us back. Please help us and highlight our case in the media as soon as possible,” one worker said.
The workers also said that one of their colleagues died five months ago but the company did not send his body home to his family. In response, Al-Hussaini said that he had attempted to contact the man’s family but had not received a response.
The workers disputed this. “We can provide contact details for the man’s family if the chief executive officer is serious about sending his body back to India.” They said their colleague’s body is being kept at King Fahd Hospital in Al-Ahsa.
Under the country’s labor legislation, companies failing to pay the salaries of their workers on time are blacklisted.