Foreign workers who have not completed their enrolment process at the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) will not be allowed to renew their work visas or change jobs from July 1.

As per the new regulations, employers will also be penalised if they fail to ensure that their expatriate workers are enrolled at the LMRA.

Failure to do this by the end of this month will mean that the employer’s transactions with LMRA will be suspended.

Enrolment is a process through which the bio-data of foreign employees in Bahrain and their family members is taken by the LMRA.

Digital signature, finger prints and a photograph is stored in a database of the employee and their dependents in Bahrain.

The procedure is done so that when smart cards are issued at a later date, the LMRA will have all the details in its database.

These data will be used by the Central Informatics Organisation (CIO) to issue Smart Cards. The process will also aid the authorities to fight against fraud and passports forgery, the LMRA stated.

The authority has urged employers to ensure that foreign employees are enrolled. Verification can be done through the LMRA website.

Employers can print a list of their employees, and check their enrolment status. If the ‘enrolled’ field is empty, the worker has to submit his details to the authority.