Saudi to enforce bank wage system for expats

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) will be enforcing a bank wage system for private sector employers to ensure that expatriate workers get their salaries on time, the news site Emirates 24|7 said on Tuesday.   The report said that through the new wage system, private companies “will be forced to open bank accounts for their employees when the new law is enforced within the next three months.”    “The new wage system is intended to protect the rights of expatriate workers and ensure employers will give them their salaries at the end of each month,” Emirates 24|7 quoted Saudi Labor Ministry undersecretary Abdullah Al Hakbani as saying.   Al Hakbani added that this move “will run parallel” to the Saudi government’s Nitaqat program, also known as Saudization, which seeks to prioritize the hiring of locals. The wage system will be known as “Wage Nitaqat,” he said.   The Emirates 24|7 report said expatriates make up for “nearly 90 percent” of workers in private companies in KSA, but officials expect the numbers “to sharply decline… as Nitaqat gains momentum.”   “In comments published on Sunday, Saudi Labor Minister Adel Faqih said the government hopes to create three million jobs for Saudis in the private sector by 2015 and another three million by 2030,” the report said.   However, in December last year, the Saudi labor ministry disclosed that the Nitaqat program “has so far been a failure” because private companies were still not complying with the plan.   In July 2011, the oil-rich Saudi Arabia was home to over eight million expatriates, of which 1.2 million were overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). The Philippine government has downplayed the program’s effect on OFWs, saying that the policy would be implemented in a “gradual and calibrated” manner.” - VVP, GMA News