Saudi Arabia: All labour services to go online

May 9, 2014

Riyadh, May 9: The Ministry of Labor plans to shift all its services online soon, including the paperwork for domestic workers, and early warnings for companies it decides to move into the Red Zone of the Nitaqat System, a ministry official has said.

“We are trying our best to improve the performance level of our services with ease of access ... that satisfies both customers and the ministry,” said Ziyad Al-Saegh, undersecretary for customer services and worker relations at the ministry.

Al-Saegh was speaking at a workshop to explain the ministry's e-services organized by the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He said the ministry completed 11 million e-services requests over the past six months. The customer services section receives 110,000 complaints a month from employers through its call center, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Officials respond to queries in 12 seconds, he said.

He urged employers to keep their account passwords secret and maintain the confidentiality of their information.

Al-Saegh urged employers to monitor the activities of their liaison officers to ensure that no one tampers with their accounts at the ministry. He said employers must inform the ministry if their e-mail accounts are hacked. He also called on the RCCI to ensure that its members supply correct information to the ministry.

Al-Saegh admitted that the ministry had incorrectly suspended services for companies where their employees had expired permits because they left the country on exit-reentry visas. This was because of poor data sharing between the ministry and the Passports Department. However, updates were now taking place every 24 hours, which would solve this problem, he said.

Al-Saegh said the ministry is also trying to ensure it has access to information held by other government agencies, to make sure it does not cut services to companies that have renewed their municipal permits and zakat certificates. He conceded that the ministry has suspended services for some firms, and delayed resuming those of others, because it did not have access to updated information.

However, the ministry has an online link with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to determine if companies have renewed their commercial licenses.

Al-Saegh said people should try to get appointments at branch offices rather than the main office in Riyadh because it is always busy. If they cannot get an appointment, they should file a complaint, he said.

The ministry would also in future provide firms with online advance warnings if they are going to be classified into the Red Zone of the Nitaqat System, have their services suspended, or if some documentation has to be renewed.

Al-Saegh said the ministry would in a few weeks introduce a system to have updated information on workers in jail. This would help ease problems for them. The ministry would deal with special individual issues separately.

He said sponsors would soon be able to complete the paperwork for domestic workers through the Musaned portal including recruitment, registering of data, and getting visas. Recruitment through private agencies would also be done online in future, he said.

Comments

Add new comment

Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.

UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

Comments