Over 200,000 Yemenis deported during amnesty period

Over 200,000 Yemenis were deported so far during the grace period, according to the head of the Supreme Coordination Council of the Yemeni community in Saudi Arabia.
Taha Muhammad Al-Humairi said that 20 buses a day have been leaving the Kingdom with Yemeni workers.
“The largest number of Yemeni violators is concentrated in the south and in Jeddah,” he said. Riyadh has the least number of labor law violators.
Foreign embassies are urging their nationals to use the remaining days of the grace period, which ends on July 3, to correct their status.
Yemeni workers are ranked second on the top 10 list of nations that have changed their professions and found new sponsors.
Al-Humairi said the Yemeni Embassy has been receiving at night thousands of Yemenis without identity cards wishing to go home. “The day time is designated for legal workers,” he said.
The embassy has ordered all its diplomats and officials to work until late at night “so that all procedures and arrangements are completed in a timely manner,” said Al-Humairi.
He said the main problems faced by the embassy include finding the original sponsors of workers and changing their professions.
He called on all Yemenis wishing to leave the country to submit their documents and complete the necessary paperwork. “Our only hope is for the Saudi authorities to increase its staff on the border, particularly Tewal in Jazan because there are great numbers of Yemenis wanting to leave Saudi Arabia,” Al-Humairi said.
He said many Yemenis have erected temporary camps in this area while waiting to be repatriated. “The embassy sent envoys to the location to care for their needs.”
In Riyadh, a number of Yemeni workers are waiting at the embassy’s premises to take advantage of the grace period, to either find other sponsors or change their professions.
The Ministry of Labor recently published statistics showing the number of workers who rectified their status since the beginning of the campaign in April.
The figures showed that over 1.58 million workers corrected their status, of which 926,330 renewed their work permits and 329,468 found new sponsors. The most sponsorship transfers took place in the construction and retail sectors.