Dozens of hungry workers who had gathered outside the Labour Ministry yesterday said they could not afford Dh20 to file a complaint against their boss.
They complained that their employer had not paid them for five months.
Thirty-seven Indian, Nepalese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi men all work for a Saudi-owned construction company.
They said they had not been paid from May until this month, and were going hungry.
"We ran out of money months ago," one Nepalese worker, Bisnu Bahadur, said, "and sometimes we borrow from friends. If they have no money, we sleep hungry."
Bahadur said the men were falling ill out of hunger and because they had no clean drinking water.
"Water at the labour camp is salty. We cannot wash," he said.
The men, who stay in Ajman, paid a bus driver to take them to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, but were not sure what to do.
An Egyptian worker from another company led them to a typing office to make a formal complaint but said the men did not have the required Dh20 to pay the typist.
A passerby gave the workers Dh100 to cover typing costs. The workers then realised they did not have any identification to prove who they were.
"Our boss has our labour cards," Bahadur said.
Later, a labour official who was told about the men contacted them and helped direct their application.
The workers said they would return today to try and file a complaint.
Gulf News repeatedly contacted the company's owner but received no response.
