'Six-year cap on foreign workers'

Bahraini Minister of Labour, Dr Majeed Al Alawi, told Gulf News that he was "quite hopeful" that the GCC leaders would take the right step to "rectify the demographic imbalance" in the region.

In an interview at his office in Manama, Al Alawi said labour policies in the Gulf are being met with serious challenges because of "the reluctance to confront market pressure". He called on the labour authorities in the GCC to join hands to tackle the problems associated with the influx of foreign workers "before it is too late".

"The prime challenge facing authorities in the Gulf is the elimination of the traditional sponsorship system and creation of an effective governmental body to assume the responsibility of importing manpower needed for development," he said.

"We also need to improve working conditions of those workers. Governments must guarantee their rights and that they receive the benefits they were promised when they were recruited," Al Alawi said.

Al Alawi said the residency time ceiling proposed for foreign workers in the Gulf is meant to ensure that unskilled foreign manpower taking part in different development projects do not come to live here for long periods that might entitle them the rights of immigrant workers under the UN conventions.

"I don't see why we cannot have a pan-Gulf policy according to which countries in the Gulf offer longer residency permits and subsequently citizenship for people who have expertise needed in the Gulf. Policies should be clear, transparent and cater to the needs and the special characteristics of our societies," he said.

"At the same time, those who come to work in the Gulf should enjoy their full rights. Violations of their human and financial rights must not be tolerated at any level," he said.

He called upon the business community to reduce its dependence on foreign labourers and warned against "losing the identity" of the indigenous society in the region.

"People in the Gulf are faced with the possible erosion of their national identity. The total dependence on foreign workers in the region has resulted in serious deformation of social and cultural norms. Such deformation will have grave consequences on us if allowed to continue."

He added: "We need to resolve these problems through cooperation with countries exporting labourers to the region, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines and Indonesia.

Following is the text of the interview:

Gulf News: Sociologists and policy makers talk about what has been defined as a 'demographic threat' due to the influx of foreign workers? Do you see any solution to the problem in the coming years?

Dr Majeed Al Alawi: The problem of the labour market in the GCC stems from the fact that there is a huge gap between the number of workers required for the development and those produced by local societies.

Following the oil boom in the 1970s, development programmes in the Gulf were implemented by intensive employment of foreign manpower. The GCC nations were neither capable nor prepared to meet the needs of the rapid and huge development.

Decades later, the market still depends on intensive and cheap manpower. The problems that face us today are mostly the fallout of economic development in the 1970s and '80s. Currently, nations in the Gulf are passing through another economic boom. Thousands of workers are being imported to meet the needs of this boom.

What is your perception of the foreign manpower in the Gulf?
From a legal point of view, and in theory, foreign manpower in the region is temporary. But in practice, the foreign labour force has become permanent and the numbers in all GCC countries has been swelling to an extent that they exceed the local population in some of those states.

The majority of foreign manpower in the region comes from different cultural and social backgrounds that could not assimilate or adapt to the local cultures. The majority of the foreign workforce came to the Gulf from non-Arab countries with which GCC countries have friendly ties. We need to maintain our friendly ties with these nations.

The above characteristic of the market have resulted in some problems. The growing unemployment among nationals has become a burning issue in most Gulf countries, although the economies of those countries produce thousands of jobs every year. We have a mosaic of cultures with minor Arab and Islamic components. It is not fair.

Is it a deformation of the local culture or can it be seen as a positive cultural diversity?
The difference between diversity and deformation is huge and should be clear. Cultural diversity means that you have a nation with a prevailing culture living along with other, mostly imported, cultures in peace and harmony. This enriches the overall scene and allows for constructive interaction.

In my opinion, Arab and Islamic cultures are the outcome of cultural diversity. Arabs digested the cultures of the neighbouring nations throughout history and reproduced them in a different form.

The deformation - like here in the Gulf - is when you have an indigenous culture that has become irrelevant compared to other dominating cultural components of the migrating people.

In some areas in the Gulf, you can't distinguish if you are in an Arab Muslim country or in an Asian one. We can't call this diversity and no nation on earth could accept the erosion of its own culture on its own land.

There is general consensus amongst officials and intellectuals in the GCC about these problems, but policies are being influenced by the forces of the market. Don't you think that governments should come up with pragmatic solutions that cater to the needs of the market instead of confronting those forces?
I have come up with a special term to describe the pressure of the market on policymakers in the Gulf. Earlier this year, I said such forces are equal to the impact of a tsunami.

Nevertheless, I have focused the policies of the Ministry of Labour in Bahrain on the need to come up with an acceptable solution to both the influx of foreign labour and the interest of the business community.

I felt that introducing the six-year residency cap will not harm businesses and will protect the identity of the Gulf in the long run. Such a solution should be endorsed by a pan-Gulf authority like the GCC summit in order to be enforced by the six Gulf governments. I pushed for it and it is now in the hands of the GCC leaders. I am waiting for their feedback.

The proposal was discussed thoroughly in the Abu Dhabi Summit in 2005 and reviewed in the Riyadh Summit last year. I am still optimistic that the leaders of the GCC will endorse it in their upcoming meetings in Doha.

I can't say that it is the ideal solution, but a compromise meant to absorb the cultural impact of foreign workers while ensuring the temporary nature of their presence in the region.

Then, what is the long- term plan to address the problem?
In my opinion, we have to reconsider the pace of economic development in the whole region. We have to avoid projects that require intensive and cheap manpower and focus on development plans that focus on industries with a high added-value. We need to invest in local citizens to lead those development plans.

In some Gulf countries, foreign workers constitute 70 per cent of the total population living along an acute problem of local unemployment. We have structural unemployment because the economy here is generating jobs that are not suitable to the national workforce.

We have unemployed citizens because they are not attracted and in some cases not qualified to work in the private sector. At the same time, the employers in private sector are not willing to recruit nationals because they have a cheaper source of manpower, which is at the same time more flexible and willing to do difficult jobs.
Such a problem does not exist in developed countries because businesses there cannot get workers from outside unless the availability of workers in the country is explored thoroughly.

Furthermore, private sector employers in developed countries contribute heavily to the rehabilitation and training programmes of the local workforce in order to prepare them to perform new tasks.

We have to adopt similar policies in the Gulf, otherwise no one would benefit from the explosion of the unemployment problem. We need the business community's support to achieve our goals.

Biography