FOREIGN governments are pressing authorities and executives in Saudi Arabia to ensure that local construction firms make delayed salary payments to thousands of workers, a sign of pressure on the kingdom’s economy due to low oil prices.

    Since late last year, the Saudi Government has responded to shrinking oil revenues by clamping down on state spending to curb a budget deficit running at about US$100 billion annually.

    This has squeezed construction firms in the kingdom as they have received less money from the government. They have in some cases delayed paying wages to thousands of their foreign workers. Some employees have not been paid for months.

    About 10 million people, largely from South Asia, Southeast Asia and other parts of the Mideast, work in Saudi Arabia. Most of them do low-paid jobs in sectors which Saudis spurn, such as construction, domestic service and retailing.

    Countries taking up the cause of the unpaid include the Philippines. In Manila, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said Monday that the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh was contacting Saudi authorities to resolve the issue.

    Baldoz has assigned her official in charge of workers’ welfare to tackle the issue.

    In recent weeks, the French ambassador to Riyadh sent a letter to the chief executive of Saudi Oger, one of the country’s biggest builders with about 38,000 employees, asking him to resolve the cases of French staff who had not been paid for four months, a diplomatic source said.

    Bangladeshi diplomats said they had contacted major Saudi construction firms to discuss wages that had gone unpaid for over two months.

    In a brief statement, the Saudi labor ministry said all private sector companies were obliged to pay salaries on time and that it would impose sanctions against firms which were late. It did not elaborate, or comment on individual cases.

    An executive at Oger said his company, like others, had been affected for several months “by the current circumstances which resulted in some delays in fulfilling our commitments to our employees.”

    Oger has adopted a recovery plan which will enable it to resume payments from March, the executive said, without giving financial details.

    The squeeze on the construction sector has become a major issue for the business community in the kingdom. Last month, Abdulrahman al-Zamil, president of the Council of Saudi Chambers business association, publicly asked King Salman to ensure that the government paid the companies. (SD-Agencies)