TOMCOM recruitment drive hits road block

Double taxation imposed by Saudi Arabia leaves workers and industrialists from India suffocated

​Hyderabad: Efforts of the Telangana Overseas Manpower Company Limited (TOMCOM) to recruit Muslim women candidates from the Sate to work in the Mecca and Medina Haram Project in Saudi Arabia reportedly hit a road block.

According to sources, in last three years TOMCOM had placed 330 candidates on various assignments to different countries Gabon and Sudan in Africa and Oman, Qatar, UAE in the Gulf countries.

Earlier, it had also held recruitment drives for medical professional in cardiology, ENT, paediatric, obesity and gynaecology, dermatology, neurosurgery, general nurses, lab technicians and X- Ray technicians and general medicine to be placed in Riyadh.

However, latest developments like imposing dependent tax and hiking employees’ tax on the companies in which more number of expatriates are working, delay and denial of wages and a host of issues have resulted in people from the State not showing interest in going to Saudi Arabia.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official from the TOMCOM said that skilled persons, like doctors, engineers and other specialists, are less in number as against semi and non-skilled workers in Saudi and Qatar. While the skilled workers are less affected by the recent developments, the semi-skilled and unskilled workers are more affected.

Majority of workers in the small and medium companies are forced to pay the taxes, instead of the managements bearing the burden. Most of the workers are, however, spared from paying the dependent tax because they have left their families behind.

Added to it, the workers are encountering problems because they are not allowed to return to their homeland. The workers used to send a part of their earnings to their families in the past. With now the government imposing taxes on them, they have found it difficult to make both ends meet there.

Sources said there are hundreds of small and medium companies run by Indians in Saudi Arabia are shutting down their industries.

A number of industrialists from Hyderabad are running companies engaged in packaging, steel manufacturing, providing housing facilities, manufacturing of wires, etc. But, most of them are now winding up their business due problems arising from the new labour laws, wiping out profits, officials said.