Government agencies in Saudi capital Riyadh have told employees to work from home starting Monday, one worker and two consultants tell AFP, as the city comes under repeated attack from Yemen’s Houthis.
The Kingdom Centre, a 99-storey tower in downtown Riyadh that houses the regional office of the International Monetary Fund, has also requested workers in its offices to stay away until further notice.
On Sunday evening, an employee working for a government agency in Riyadh received a message saying “it has been decided to implement remote work from Monday to Thursday this week”.
“We ask everyone to continue their activities as normal,” it adds.
Two consultants working for two Saudi government agencies say they have received the same instructions. One of them tells AFP that he arrived at his workplace as normal this morning only to learn that remote work had been mandated.
“The email was sent internally. We are consultants, so we didn’t receive it. Once on site, we contacted the project manager on the client’s side, who informed us,” he explains.
Two other sources tell AFP that government offices located in skyscrapers in the Al-Olaya district, in central Riyadh, had been evacuated two weeks earlier.
Companies based in the King Abdullah Financial District, which hosts offices of major American firms, have also asked employees to work from home, according to other sources.
