No salary for 7 months in Dubai, man calls off wedding

A Hyderabad man called off his marriage because he hasn’t been paid salary by his Dubai employers for over seven months. Mohammad Abdul Khadeer, 30, who got engaged last October and was due to get married later this month following his sister’s wedding on Friday, May 8, says he cancelled his wedding because of lack of money.

“I had no other option but to do this (call off wedding),” says Khadeer, an electrical engineer from his hometown Hyderabad where loan sharks, he adds, are hounding his family everyday and threatening to stop even his sister’s marriage. Khadeer, an estimator at a Dubai-based mechanical electrical and plumbing (MEP) company, earns Dh 6,500 per month (Rs 1.10 lakh) says the last time he saw a salary credit to his account was only Dh3,500 (Rs 60,000) on October 28, 2014.

“I haven’t been paid a penny since barring the odd instances when my plea for some money was met with a few hundred dirhams couple of times. All I was told instead was to wait (for salaries),” says Khadeer who was eventually forced to borrow almost Rs 600,000 (approximately Dh34,600) from private money lenders in India in order to make advance payments for his sister’s wedding.

“Everything is stuck in a limbo because of my unpaid dues and I am running out of time,” says Khadeer. On April 20, Khadeer filed a complaint against his employers in the labour court. Khadeer’s employers were unreachable for comment.

(www. gulfnews.com)