Saudi Arabia: All labour services to go online

May 9, 2014

Labour_services

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.

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News Network
April 23,2024

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The genocidal Israeli war on the Gaza Strip has entered its 200th day, with occupation forces killing more Palestinians in defiance of widespread international outcry to end the carnage.

The aggression marked its 200th day on Tuesday with no end in sight to the Israeli war that has so far killed a shocking number of Palestinians and led to a humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli forces have committed three "massacres" over the past 24 hours, killing at least 32 Palestinians and wounding 59 others.

The numbers, it added, bring the Palestinian death toll to more than 34,183, with at least 77,143 injured and an estimated 7,000 missing and presumed dead since early October.

More than 14,500 children and 9,500 women are among those killed, making up over 70 percent of the victims, according to health officials.

Israel waged its brutal US-backed war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Israel has been carrying out war crimes in Gaza by deliberately starving people and forcing their evacuation, as well as targeting hospitals and schools sheltering displaced Palestinians.

Despite all these atrocities, the regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives of “destroying Hamas” and finding Israeli captives held in Gaza.

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News Network
April 22,2024

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Some 62,000 Israeli settlers have fled areas in the northern sector of the 1948 Israeli-occupied lands amid fear of strikes by Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement in retaliation for the bloody onslaught on Gaza, latest reports have revealed.

Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television news channel, citing Israeli media outlets, reported on Sunday evening that the number of settlers that have evacuated the area as a result of Hezbollah’s operations now stands at a staggering 62,000.

The report noted that 30,000 of the settlers have evacuated northern occupied Palestine on their own as fears are mounting among the residents that Hezbollah fighters continue to carry out daily operations with no signs that they are deterred by any action the Israeli army is taking.

Israeli media outlets further noted that 40% of the evacuees are considering no return to the region.

Moreover, 38% of those who voluntarily left the area, no longer intend to return to their previous places of residence in the northern occupied territories.

This comes as Hezbollah targeted a facility housing Israeli soldiers in the Shomera settlement earlier on Sunday with a barrage of rockets.

The Lebanese resistance group also struck surveillance devices newly installed around the Dovev military barracks, completely destroying the hardware.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it attacked the deployment positions of Israeli soldiers south of the Jal al-Alam site, using heavy-caliber Burkan (Volcano) missiles.

In another statement, the resistance group announced that its fighters struck surveillance equipment at the Misgav Am military site, which Israeli forces had lately re-positioned.

Surveillance equipment at the al-Malkiya base was also targeted and destroyed, it said, adding that the operation was carried out with a salvo of rockets.

The Israeli regime has repeatedly attacked southern Lebanon since October 7, when it launched a genocidal war on Gaza that has killed at least 34,097 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

In retaliation, Hezbollah has launched near-daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions.

At least 349 people have been killed on the Lebanese border, including 68 civilians.

Hezbollah has already fought off two Israeli wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. The resistance forced the regime to retreat in both conflicts.

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News Network
April 21,2024

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Austrian police authorities have arrested the director of a Palestinian news agency based in the Gaza Strip, which is aligned with the Hamas resistance movement, following spurious allegations and intense pressure from the Tel Aviv regime’s officials.

Gaza Now News Network wrote in a post published on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that “the occupying Israeli regime is trying hard to prosecute anyone connected to the Palestinian media as part of attempts to silence the voice of wounded Gaza and stop disclosure of the Palestinian nation’s sufferings and the massacres being committed against women, children and the elderly.”

It added, “The latest of such attempts was the prosecution of Palestinian-born journalist Mustafa Ayyash. Austrian police stormed his house, tampered with his personal belongings, confiscated electronic devices, arrested him and his wife, and took him for interrogation.”

Gaza Now noted that the Austrian police hacked its WhatsApp account, which is followed by 300,000 users, and closed it down. They also shut the news network’s Facebook pages and accounts, which are followed by some eight million users.

It underscored that Israeli officials threaten Ayyash from time to time with prosecution and assassination, and hamper the activities of the news network on social media platforms.

This comes as the Israeli military had earlier targeted Ayyash's family and killed scores of his relatives in a series of airstrikes in late November ahead of a temporary ceasefire.

The Permanent Observer of Palestine at the United Nations Salah Abdel-Shafi and Chairman of Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh mourned the death of his family.

Back on March 27, US and UK authorities unveiled sanctions against two people and three companies related to Gaza Now over alleged fundraising efforts “in support of Hamas.”

The Treasury Department said in a statement that Gaza Now, whose popular Telegram channel has more than 1.8 million followers, and its founder started fundraising for Hamas after the movement’s Operation al-Aqsa Storm against Israel on October 7.

The US also slapped sanctions against Aozma Sultana, the director of two companies that allegedly gave “thousands of dollars to Gaza Now and advertised Gaza Now as a partner during a joint fundraiser shortly after the large-scale surprise attack.”

Separately, the UK Treasury announced a full asset freeze against two individuals suspected of providing financial support for Gaza Now.

“All funds and economic resources in the UK belonging to or controlled by Sultana and Ayyash have been frozen,” they added.

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