Bahrain plans to introduce separate work and residency permits

Manama: Bahrain is mulling a scheme to limit the absolute powers of employers and sponsors over expatriate workers and eventually abolish the controversial sponsorship system by disassociating the residence and work permits.

"One of the options we are looking into now is to have separate permits for work and residence so that the employer has no control over the residence visa," Jamil Humaidan, the assistant undersecretary for labour, said on Sunday.

"The residence permit will thus be clearly a prerogative of the state and the relationship between the employer and the employee will be based purely on the work contract," the official said in remarks to the press.

Currently, the residence visas of foreigners working in Bahrain are directly linked with their work permits and expatriate workers are entirely dependent on their contracts to enter, work, change jobs or leave the country.

"According to the new plan, only the state can decide on the residence of the expatriates while any dispute between the employer and the employee will be confined to the work contract clauses. The contract will be formulated within the confines of the Bahraini labour law," Humaidan said.

The new scheme guarantees the rights of both the employers and employees, the official said, but gave no date for its implementation.

Bahrain earlier this year said that it wanted to scrap the sponsorship system adopted by the Gulf country and which serves as the legal basis for the residency and employment of millions of foreign workers, mainly from India, Pakistan and the Philippines.

Gulf countries, under pressure to improve their records in the treatment of foreigners, have made steps to reconsider the system amid claims that it impinges on workers' human rights and that it is misused by employers to deny justice and basic protections.

Last month, Bahrain's Labour Minister Majeed Al Alawi said during working visits to India and Sri Lanka, that his country would abolish the sponsorship system by the end of the year and that it would work closely with the International Labour Organisation to draft new measures.

"We are studying the possibility to remove sponsorship for foreigners seeking jobs in Bahrain; this would help them to look for another job if they are not satisfied with the current job," Al Alawi said after he signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Sri Lanka's Foreign Employment and Welfare Minister Keheliya Rambukwella on improving working conditions for Sri Lankan workers in Bahrain.

Around ten million foreigners, mostly unskilled or semi-skilled migrants, work in the Gulf states.

Bahrain is home to around 500,000 labourers, including 280,000 from India.