100,000 contractors forced to quit business

Chairman of the National Committee for Contractors at the Council of Saudi Chambers Fahd Al-Hammadi said that more than 100,000 contractors quit the business in the past one year.
“The number of registered contractors at the chambers in the Kingdom fell to 140,000 from 240,000 in a year. They just disappeared from the market, according to statistical studies,” Al-Hammadi said at a press conference in the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently. He put the number of classified contractors at 3,100 who accounted for 2 percent of contractors taking up projects in the Kingdom.
Hammadi warned against a clause in the new labor regulations permitting foreign workers to keep their passports and to obtain a transfer to any sponsor they wished when the contract period with the original sponsoring company ended.
He said the clause if implemented would be catastrophic for the Saudi contractors’ market.