John Molyneux reports on a strike in the financial heart of Saudi Arabia:
I went last Thursday to my workplace, and I found out that there were over 3000 workers demanding their rights before they called a general strike in the construction site in Saudi Binladin Group. The workers were very angry, there workplace is one of the largest construction project in the country, which worth SR.100 billion. However, they live in a terrible conditions, one of the workers was telling me how he was living: “I live in a room 4m x 3m with 8 people, and for every 10 people there is only one toilet”. Another Egyptian worker was telling me about the working conditions and the restriction of religious freedom: “those are Zionists, they don’t even allow me to pray on time!!”, and another worker was speaking about the water at the site, which is infected and full of filth and insects: “the managers wouldn’t even wash their hands with it, but for us we have to drink it because it is the only drinking water at the site”. The others talked about the delayed salaries and the unpaid overtime: “can you believe that some of the workers here are paid only 700 riyals a month, and I am paid 1000 riyal, how would we survive??”.