'Don't let runaways send money home'

Bahraini entrepreneurs have come up with a proposal that the runaways should be stopped from transferring money to their native countries. “They should be caught, penalised and banned in all the GCC countries,” they demanded.

The businessmen were speaking in the “The Construction Sector’s Forum” organised by the Construction Sector Committee of Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) on the chamber premises yesterday.

Speaking to DT News on the sidelines of the forum, Board Member of BCCI and Chairman of Asian Business Committee Sajid Shaikh said that among so many other things ‘runaway’ was a big issue and it had been pending for the last five years. “If the runaway does not report within 90 days, the owner has the right to take the replacement.”

Citing an employer in the programme, who had 15 employees and out of them 12 were runaway, Sajid Shaikh queried: “How will he run the business if you don’t give him an alternative?”

“If he takes all the proofs to the immigration, LMRA after they caught him two three years later, they would ask the sponsor to bring his ticket. Why do not they ask the runaway where he was making money for two years illegally in the country?” he said.

“Unfortunately, there is no penalty on him – penalty is on the business owner only, which is not fair. First of all, they should give the alternative labour and secondly, should not ask the owner to pay the ticket for him when he was not giving any service to the company,” he opined.

Sajid Shaikh said that the participants had been complaining about the manner they had been treated. According to him, before cancelling the CR of entrepreneurs as his employee failed in the medical or missed the appointment for medical test, they should send him an email and give him a certain period, which can be specified from 15 days to three months. “The other problem is that once they stop one CR, they stop all the CRs and it means you have to close all your business.”

He suggested that the employees of the same sponsor should be allowed to work in the other companies of the same sponsor.

Chairman of Construction Sector Committee, BCCI, Isa Abdulrahim said that they had a lot of problems with the LMRA, Tamkeen, Housing Ministry and Immigration. “We have to raise these issues with the government and see what is to be done.” He said that the contractors wanted to have direct contracts from the Housing Ministry.

Vice President of Bahrain Contractors Society Younis Almosawi remarked that the main purpose of the forum was to know about the major challenges the construction sector was facing.

He said that they would discuss the conclusions of the discussions with the authorities to iron out the issues.       

In Almosawi’s view, the LMRA should refund the fees of the runaways and avoid putting fines on the business owners. He also wanted Tamkeen to make their application process easier.

Hisham Matter, MD of Lion Constructions revealed that these days the number of runaways was increasing shockingly high and LMRA needed to keep tab on them. “I have small company and I have 17 runaways, you can imagine what will be the situation of the big companies,” he said.

“Officials said that after the Amnesty Scheme, there would be serious punishments but where are those punishments?” he queried.

Pointing out that the small and medium enterprises were the representatives of 90 per cent of the business community in Bahrain, he said that they were under depression and didn’t know how to survive after the lifting of subsidies. “We want to send message to the higher authorities “please solve the problems seriously.”  

“The post fee has been increased from BD15 to BD50 and we are always getting only increase in the fees and there is no support from anywhere. There is no strategy, only a mess. Why no serious solutions?” Matter groused.