While the Saudi regime proudly showcases glossy images of sleek trains and luxurious stations at international conferences—branding the Riyadh Metro as a “civilizational achievement”—Amnesty International exposes the real scene behind the façade. Beneath the concrete, glass, and modern lighting lies a full decade of suffering: ten years of systematic exploitation inflicted on thousands of migrant workers brought from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal under the banner of “development.” In reality, these workers were subjected to the worst forms of abuse—forced labour, stolen wages, crippling recruitment debts that begin even before they leave their home countries, and a sponsorship system that not only failed to protect them but actively helped crush them.
Amnesty’s report does not describe isolated incidents, rogue companies, or individual misconduct. It uncovers a sustained, deliberate, and deeply rooted pattern of abuse—one that consistently prioritised political image-making and media spectacle over human rights. The Riyadh Metro was not “development”; it was the re-engineering of modern-day slavery in a sleek, technical form.
“From Dhaka and Kathmandu to Riyadh: Debt Begins Before the Job, and Exploitation Begins Before Arrival”
According to Amnesty, exploitation starts from the very first step—in the impoverished cities workers leave behind. Migrant workers were forced to pay between $700 and $3,500 to recruitment agents in their home countries—fees that are explicitly illegal under Saudi law, yet remain the main gateway to employment in the kingdom.
One Nepali worker said he was forced to sell a small piece of land inherited from his father just to pay recruitment fees, hoping he could repay the loan once he started work in Riyadh. In Bangladesh, another worker said he borrowed money from three different lenders at high interest rates to finance his travel. An Indian worker reported that the recruitment office charged him “fees equal to four full months of salary” before he had even begun working.
These debts turn workers into economic hostages. Returning home empty-handed would be disastrous, so they accept any conditions imposed on them. They arrive in Saudi Arabia already burdened with financial chains that place their lives entirely in the hands of their employers—creating a deeply unequal power dynamic that enables systematic abuse without resistance.
“Humiliating Wages and Deadly Hours: Workers’ Lives Consumed Above Ground and Below It”
The next shock revealed by the report is the degrading level of wages. Many workers earned less than $2 an hour, with basic salaries as low as 1,400 SAR (≈ $373)—less than half the effective minimum salary for Saudi citizens under the Nitaqat programme. Wage discrimination is not implied; it is explicit.
Workers said they had to work more than 60 hours per week simply to survive and send a small amount back home. One Bangladeshi worker told Amnesty:
“We weren’t working—we were being consumed.”
Then comes another layer of suffering: the deadly climate.
Workers endured over 40°C heat for long hours, working outdoors with insufficient shade, no cooling measures, and extreme dehydration. A Nepali worker described it bluntly:
“We were working in hell. The heat hits your head and chest until you feel like you might collapse at any moment.”
Despite the danger, many workers received no proper rest breaks, no cold water, and no protective equipment. Several fainted, many were hospitalised, and some simply vanished from the worksites—never heard from again by their colleagues.
“The Kafala System: A Chain That Breaks the Worker Long Before It Breaks the Law”
Amnesty’s report highlights that, despite claims of “reforming the sponsorship system,” Saudi Arabia still grants employers nearly absolute control over workers:
● They can block workers from transferring to another job
● They can report them as “absent” or “runaways”
● They can cancel their residency as retaliation
● They can confiscate passports—despite legal prohibitions
● They can prevent them from leaving the country
One worker told Amnesty he worked a full year without pay because his employer threatened to file a “runaway” report—an action that instantly turns a worker into a wanted person, leading to arrest and deportation.
Another worker described being housed in an overcrowded room of 25 square meters shared by eight men, and their supervisor routinely threatened to call the police if anyone tried to change jobs.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the architecture of a system that empowers employers to control, punish, and silence workers—while the state remains complicit through silence and selective enforcement.
“The Riyadh Metro Was Completed—but Human Dignity Collapsed”
The Riyadh Metro may be complete in official photographs, but the people who built it emerged broken—exhausted, indebted, and stripped of basic dignity. The project is celebrated as a national “achievement,” yet for ten years it operated as a vast industrial zone of organised exploitation where the state consistently sided with employers while leaving workers without protection, without rights, and without a voice.
Amnesty International places the Saudi regime face-to-face with the truth:
Bin Salman cannot build “modern” projects with a pre-modern mindset.
He cannot speak of “development” while burying human rights under concrete.
He cannot claim to shape the future while building everything on the backs of crushed, silenced workers who are denied the right to protest, negotiate, or even leave.
In the end, the biggest question remains:
If this is the reality behind one of the kingdom’s largest and most visible infrastructure projects, what is happening in the projects the world never gets to see?
