Working on-site in Africa - late wages, trust issues with company, thinking about quitting after 4 months

Greetings lovely people of Reddit,

Didn't use reddit much before, but since I've been stuck with awful internet for 4 months already, I learned to appreciate sites which are simple and quick to load. Reddit happened to be the best "investment" in time and data limit due to the incredible amount of useful (and not so) info :

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TL;DR: Is it "OK" to quit after just 4 months due to bad working conditions (broken promises from company), or trust them after apology that everything will soon get better as this "never happens normally"

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Now for the wall of text:

25M, have masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, focused on manufacturing engineering and automation. Graduated in early 2017, got my first work right after and worked there for 1 year. Worked like crazy, been their best employee for months (smaller furniture company), introduced modern systems and software into production, improved model development time by a huge percent etc... Quit after being severely overworked and stressed even though I kinda liked the job (often 6 work days, 9-10 work hours and 15 minute breaks). Even though they offered better wage and position after quitting it was too late, burnout happened.

Then I applied for a Site Engineer position in Oil and Gas industry in northern African country (both me and this company are from a Balkan country). They liked my resume so I was soon invited for couple of interviews. I made it to the final one and signed 1 year contract for this new maintenance project. I generally knew what to expect as few of my friends had very similar jobs before.

Fast forward to 4 months in - so far the job wasn't really like described - much more paperwork than actual "engineering" stuff, my project has been paused for a month now due to some management issues and equipment availability for this country. I only got the salary for first month which was already 1 month late, still waiting for last 2 months. It's similar for other employees here, older ones are owed even more. Accommodation and food is also a bit worse than promised, unstable and slow internet, still no TV, and you basically never go out after 6 pm for safety reasons. We even had some serious security problems on arrival, some of us robbed and lost money and phones - and I still continued working. "If you're going through hell - keep going"

I sent a resign e-mail last week to the CEO and general manager in main office. They called after a few days (they had a business trip to solve this exact management issue) and apologized for everything, promised things will get better very soon, I'll get all late salaries next week and they would reimburse everything I lost on arrival (so far only gave me like 1/4th). They liked my work so far very much and asked me to continue working here. Promised some other stuff, mentioned additional education for special inspection certificates (which does sound plausible given some other circumstances). Even the owner of the company called to apologize.

As I see it, they almost started begging me for staying as the main site manager already quit and I'm the only one able to continue site work right now. Especially now when it matters the most - they solved these issues and project should start soon. If it doesn't, they will get huge penalties from the client for being late (true, as I have regular meetings with client's managers I know everything about the situation, and of course it's all in the main project contract).

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Despite all the negatives, I'm still considering whether I should quit or trust them (one more time). I hate quitting and this would also look very bad in my CV. The salary is actually decent and will go even higher (if they fulfill their part of the deal of course), and will allow me to save some serious cash. Basically after two years even without any promotions I can save up for a decent apartment or a smaller house in my country. And it is very easy to find much better position after gaining some experience and additional education - it's crazy how good salaries for professionals are in this industry, The work itself (when the project finally starts) will not be as mundane and boring.

Also I feel responsible for the project even though nothing was my fault at all. I know quitting will make major problems for the company and also other employees as well and I would feel bad for it. Just for reference, I willingly extended my notice period at my last job for 15 additional days in order to teach 2 new engineers and 1 technician about everything. I was the only one to complete training for a new CNC machine there, and also had started with training for programming robot welding machine so I couldn't just leave them...

What would you do in this situation? Am I a fool for even considering staying in these conditions, or I should suck it up and push forward in hope for better future here?

I'm almost sure I won't change my decision, just hoping for some additional comments. I know there are some experienced HRs, managers and fellow engineers here. In this case I would have the whole trouble of finding new job but I'm positive I'd find something soon enough. "Safe option" - they would love to have me back at my old company.

Thanks for reading! I'm starting to like this community more and more, cheers :)

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