As the images of workers walking around the office of Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco dressed up as human sanitiser dispensers surfaced online, netizens took to social media calling it an act of racism.
A Twitter user @hannxbaI shared the photo on Twitter with the caption, "Man the humiliation in his eyes is just shattering."
In the shared photos, the worker is seen wearing a face mask and dressed up as a large hand sanitiser dispenser with a real one attached in front of him. In one of the shared pictures, the worker can be seen standing in front of an elevator, while in another picture, another worker, presumably an Aramco employee, uses the hand sanitiser.
As the photo surfaced online, the oil company was significantly criticised for humiliating the worker, during the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Following the backlash, Saudi Aramco took to their Twitter handle and wrote, "In response to the viral photos of a colleague wearing sterilisation in one of our facilities, Saudi Aramco would like to express our strong dissatisfaction with such abusive behavior. We wanted to emphasise the importance of hand sanitation."
طبقية خليجية
— هشام فقيه (@HishamFageeh) March 10, 2020
اهداء من أرامكو pic.twitter.com/FpWsUNw7mE
"With immediate effect, the company has stopped this act and has taken drastic measures to prevent it from happening again. The company would like to strongly emphasise that this doesn't adhere to our values, ethics, and conduct," the company said.
As the pictures went viral, social media users condemned the act and flooded the Internet with their reactions. A user said, "I just did a paper on modern day slavery, this is definitely a prime example."
Another wrote, "To be fair, this could've been the misjudgement of one division in efforts to spread awareness about combating Covid-19. Quite frankly distasteful and inexcusable, but it wasn't company wide."
"Wtf?? so there's not even a single person who's educated enough to just take that sanitiser and hang it on the wall instead and stop them from taking pictures? whoever came up with this stupid idea should be punished. I'm so confused??" asked one user.
A user remarked, "Person who came up with this idea needs to use the sanitiser to clean their rusty backwards mind."