New dawn in labour reforms

LMRA headquarters opened at Sanabis
Bonny Mascarenhas
Staff Reporter

“The doors to a new era have been opened with the launch of the Labour Market Regulatory Authority,” said Minister of Labour Dr. Majed bin Muhsen Al Alawi said yesterday at the official opening of the organization’s Sanabis headquarters.“The cooperation of the Ministries of Labour, Interior, Health, Central Informatics Organisation and other official bodies with the LMRA will create a new environment in the labour market.

It is going to lead to a closer relation between the government and the business community. The end result will be better services,” he added.

The LMRA has been tasked in addition to implementing labour reforms to issue work visas for all expatriate employees from the public and private sector.

Employers now have to apply online for a work visa and need not make visits to multiple ministries as was the practice in the past. The work visa will be issued within 10 working days.

The authorities concerned have asked employers to ensure that they use the work permits issued by the Labour Ministry before they apply at the LMRA for a work visa. But applications to employ domestic help will continue to be made at the Ministry.

As part of the new initiatives about 80 per cent of fees collected on expatriates would be utilised in training the Bahraini workforce, Dr. Alawi said, “From the BD440 received on each expat employee, BD240 will be directed to the Labour Fund.”

Present at the inauguration were other LMRA board members and CEO Ali Radhi who said, “Employers who have not registered their details will not be issued new work visas until they cleanse their employee data. Renewals of visas will be done. The data of 140,000 workers has been cleansed until now.”

He added that it was difficult to gauge how many employers had to yet register with the authority.

Representative for Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry and LMRA board vice chairman Farouk Almoayyed said that the difficulty lay in the fact that Commercial Registrations (CR) that existed only on paper.

“These people probably do not have any workers on their CR and hence have not come to register. They also do not have a physical office for the authorities to check. The process in getting these CRs and their employees verified will probably take about a year or more,” he said.