The labour crisis at the local Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) will be resolved, Saudi Arabia’s Labour Minister Muferrej al-Haqbani has said.

The company, which has laid off thousands of workers in recent months, has promised to resolve all the issues, Al-Haqbani told reporters on the sidelines of Euromoney Saudi Arabia conference on 3 May.

“The issue will be resolved. The company has promised to solve all the issues related to the wages,’’ he said, adding that some of the workers will get paid this month and some others will receive their salaries in June.

The company has reportedly fired up to 77,000 foreign workers, however the labour minister did not confirm the number of job cuts at the company, which has built some of the most iconic infrastructure projects in the oil-rich kingdom. “We don’t have the correct number,’’ the minister said.

SBG on 2 May said it has paid the affected employees, “The Group is honouring its commitments and the affected employees have already received their full compensations and any other entitlements in accordance with the applicable laws,’’ a company spokesman said in a statement. “We will honour the same commitment in case further manpower is released.”

Mecca protests

Referring to violent protests by workers in Mecca, which resulted in the burning of company assets in the holy city, the minister said those were solitary incidents relating to one company and does not reflect the situation in the kingdom’s labour market.

The workers staged violent protests after SBG terminated their employment contracts and gave them permanent exit visas to leave the country. However, they have refused to leave the kingdom without getting paid.

Labour protests are “not a phenomenon now and it’s not going to be [in the future]”, Al-Haqbani said. “We follow our data base weekly and we didn’t any firings of Saudis or any foreigners. We still have expats coming to the country and two cases of protests do not represent the situation of the Saudi labour market,’’ he added.

The incident in Mecca, is the latest labour strife the company has faced. SGB in March, had to seek help from Mecca Police and agreed to pay delayed salaries to its staff in a deal with the Labour Ministry to end the worker protests in the city.

About 2,000 engineers, management staff and workers who had not been paid salaries for months took part in the demonstrations. The agreement, drafted on a Mecca Police letterhead, allowed the workers to stay at home until the salaries are paid by the company after deducting the period of absence. They were also given the option to leave the firm and receive a final settlement before exit, or they could transfer sponsorship to another company, according to the agreement seen by MEED.

The company spokesperson on 2 May statement said that most of the “released jobs’’ had initially been recruited for contracted projects with specific time frame and deliverables. Adjusting the size of the company’s manpower is a normal routine, especially, whenever projects are completed or are near completion, according to the spokesperson.

Financial woes

SBG, which had grown during Saudi Arabia’s building boom of the past decade, has mainly relied on multibillion-dollar state contracting for business. Like many other contractors in the kingdom, the company is struggling with cash flow issues, mainly due to delays in payments it is owed.

The financial woes for SBG have been compounded further as the company, which relies mainly on multibillion-dollar state contracting for business, is barred from winning new business in Saudi Arabia until it is cleared in the Mecca Grand Mosque crane accident inquiry.

MEED reported on 1 February that Riyadh had concluded investigations into the September 2015 disaster, in which a crane collapsed on worshippers in the mosque, leaving 100 dead. The government, which has yet to announce the findings of the probe, also ordered SBG to stop work on the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina in December 2015.