2024-02-24 18:46:18
Amazon paid $1.9 million to hundreds of current and former workers following media reports of abuses once morest migrants who worked in the online retail giant’s warehouses in Saudi Arabia.
Amazon said in a statement that it had paid more than 700 migrant workers, who were required to pay recruitment fees and other costs to secure work in the company’s distribution centers in Saudi Arabia.
The company stressed that it is committed to “the basic human rights and dignity of people associated with its business around the world.” Amazon revealed last fall that it employs approximately 1,500 permanent and seasonal workers in Saudi Arabia.
The company’s move came following joint media investigations by a number of media outlets, according to what was reported by the newspaper “The Guardian“.
All 54 workers from Nepal interviewed in the investigations said that recruitment companies in their home country required them to pay harsh fees, ranging from $830 to $2,300, as a condition for getting jobs at Amazon in Saudi Arabia.
These amounts far exceed what the government of Nepal, the United States, or the United Nations allows, according to the newspaper.
48 of the Nepalese workers added that they were misled regarding their working conditions, and were told that they would work directly for Amazon, but they ended up working for Saudi labor supply companies that placed them in short-term contract jobs in Amazon warehouses in the Kingdom.
“I never expected to get my fee money back,” said Bishnuman Shrestha, a Nepali worker who worked for Amazon in Saudi Arabia from 2021 to early 2024. “I never even thought regarding it in my dream.”
He received more than $1,800, which covered the amount he paid in recruitment fees, he told the newspaper.
Amazon said it partnered with a labor rights consulting firm to “conduct a focused assessment of foreign migrant worker issues” at two Amazon facilities in Saudi Arabia, and confirmed that it found multiple violations of labor standards.
In addition to recruitment fees, violations included “substandard living accommodations, wages, and delays in resolving workers’ complaints.”
The company said that it has strengthened its internal controls related to its work with labor supply companies, and Amazon explained that it has also improved the communications mechanism that allows workers to submit complaints to Amazon management.
An Amnesty International report last year said: “Contract workers working in Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia have been deceived by recruitment agents and labor insurance companies, unfairly denied wages, housed in appalling conditions, and prevented from obtaining alternative work or leaving.” “The country.”
Last October, the Saudi authorities announced that they had opened an investigation into reports of the suffering of migrant workers working in the warehouses of the giant Amazon company in the Kingdom, stressing that mistreatment or exploitation of workers is “unacceptable.”
The Saudi Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development confirmed in a statement, a copy of which was received by Agence France-Presse, that it had opened an investigation into the matter even before the issuance of a report by Amnesty International on Tuesday denouncing the exposure of workers from Nepal to horrific living conditions and safety risks during work, in addition to being deprived of their wages.
The ministry concerned with the conditions of local and foreign workers in the Gulf Kingdom said, “Any form of mistreatment or exploitation of workers is unacceptable and is being comprehensively investigated by the competent Saudi authorities.”
She added, “The distressing reports mentioned in this case are already the subject of an ongoing investigation.”
With a population of 32.2 million, Saudi Arabia includes 13.4 million foreigners, or 41.6 percent, according to what the General Authority for Statistics announced last May based on the results of the national census it conducted in 2022.
Millions of migrant workers, most of them from Arab and Asian countries, often occupy manual and service jobs in the wealthy Gulf kingdom.
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