White collar workers not impacted by Saudi visa fee hike

Hyderabad: There are some two million workers from Telangana in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, of which about 85 per cent are blue collar workers. President of the Gulf Return Welfare Members’ Society Shaik Chand Pasha said that the hike in dependent visa fee will burden only the blue collar workers. For white collar workers, companies bear those charges. “White collar workers, from supervisor rank employees to managers, engineers, senior engineers, and in a few cases, foremen, etc., are most essential for companies. So, they bear dependent visa charges for those employees. Companies give them free accommodation and free education for their children, companies even bear flight charges for them and their dependents to visit India once a year,” he said.

While the Saudi Arabian government announced revised visa fee for dependents of individual Iqamah (work visa) holders, changes do not affect white collar employees since companies pay for them. Companies whose staff are more than 50 per cent Saudi nationals have to pay SR 300 per family per month from 2018, SR 500 a month in 2019 and SR 700 a month in 2020 for the dependent visas of their non-Saudi employees.  Companies whose staff are less than 50 per cent Saudi nationals have to pay SR 100 more per month per family than the former category.