A company has been facing backlash after forcing a migrant worker to dress up as a human hand sanitizer and walk around the lobby for people’s convenience.
The incident occurred at the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian oil mogul, where a worker wearing a box with ‘hand sanitizer’ written on it was pictured walking around with an actual dispenser to disinfect people’s hands.
After the photos went viral on Twitter, the company was quickly slammed whereas users branded them ‘abusive’ and ‘racist.’
“#Saudi @ARAMCO’s idea of a hand sanitizer stand: a foreign worker from a poor country. The company apologized after a wave of criticism for its utter #racism & disregard of human dignity. Mistreatment of foreign labor in some Gulf countries is outrageously rampant,” Dr. Abbas Kadhim wrote.
“The photos that went viral recently of an Asian Saudi #Aramco worker forced to act as a human stand for dispensing hand sanitizer reflect a lack of respect for human dignity and a failure to protect #human_rights,” a think tank called ImpACT International added.
While some people were plain shocked by the company’s idea, others have suggested that the abuse of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia is far too common.
While the country has undergone certain reforms and measures to decrease the number of abuse instances, migrants in Saudi Arabia still suffer from a lack of basic human rights according to the reports of plenty of foreign workers in the country.
After the incident went viral, Saudi Aramco took to Twitter to claim they were “strongly dissatisfied” by the incident and insisted they don’t know who came up with such an idea.
No apology has been directly issued to the worker dressed as a hand sanitizer.
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Replaced!