Saudi Binladin Group employees set fire to buses in protest after huge layoffs

Maj. Nayef al-Sharif, the spokesman for the Civil Defense in the city of Mecca, said late April 30 that firefighters put out the blaze without any injuries reported.

The Binladin Group has not issued any statements about the reported layoffs or the unrest. Calls and an email request for comment to the company were not immediately returned.

For several weeks, thousands of the firm’s employees have been staging rare protests in Mecca and the Red Sea coastal city of Jiddah, with some saying they have not been paid for six months.

The attack on the company’s buses comes a day after the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying the company has terminated employment for 50,000 foreign workers and issued them exit visas. Many of those workers are apparently refusing to leave without being paid their late wages, the newspaper reported.

Gulf-based construction firms have been among the hardest-hit due to lower oil prices that have curbed and sometimes delayed government spending on major infrastructure projects.

The Saudi Binladin Group is one of the world’s largest construction firms. Founded in 1931 and headquartered in Jiddah, the firm has been behind some of Saudi Arabia’s most important projects, including roads, tunnels, airports, universities and hotels. It has carried out expansion work throughout the holy city of Mecca to accommodate more Muslim pilgrims, including construction of a massive clock tower with luxury hotels.

The Binladin family has been close to Saudi Arabia’s ruling family for decades. Al-Qaida’s late leader Osama bin Laden was a renegade son of the construction firm’s founder, Mohammed bin Laden, and was disowned by the family in the 1990s.

Despite the close family ties, the Saudi government barred the firm from acquiring new contracts after an initial government probe found the construction company was partly responsible for a crane collapse in Mecca’s Grand Mosque last year that killed 111 people days before the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage.