DHAKA: Ethiopian workers face hostility amid ‘regularisation’ campaign to control foreign labour and get more Saudi citizens into work.

Under the watchful eyes of Saudi policemen slouched in their squad cars along a rundown street, little knots of Ethiopian men sit chatting on doorsteps and sprawl on threadbare grass at one of Riyadh’s busiest junctions.

These are tense, wary times in Manfouha, a few minutes drive from the capital’s glittering towers and swanky shopping malls.

Manfouha is the bleak frontline in Saudi Arabia’s campaign to get rid of its illegal foreign workers, control the legal ones and help get more of its own citizens into work.

This month two or three Ethiopians were killed here after a raid erupted into full-scale rioting.

Keeping their distance from the officers parked every few hundred metres, the Ethiopians look shifty and sound nervous.

‘Of course I have an iqama (residence permit),’ insisted Ali, a gaunt twenty something man in cheap leather jacket and jeans.

‘I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t.’

But he didn’t have the document on him. And his story, in broken Arabic, kept changing: He was in the process of applying for one; actually, no, his kafeel (sponsor) had it.

It didn’t sound as if it would convince the police or passport inspection teams prowling the neighbourhood.

BDST: 1829 HRS, NOV 30, 2013