MP Al Sayegh: Treaties must not outrank citizens’ interests

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

MP Mariam Al Sayegh led a sharp challenge to the government’s stance that domestic workers may switch jobs once contracts end, arguing that treaties must not outrank citizens’ interests.

She said families pay about BD2,000 to recruit a domestic worker and that easy moves between roles can shut Bahrainis out of jobs they could fill.

“If these agreements do not match the interest of citizens or our local conditions, we do not want them,” Al Sayegh told MPs.

Links

She also urged closer links between visas, skills and experience to fit roles to the work on offer, saying looser rules tempt workers to switch jobs with ease and strain household budgets and family life.

The government set out a different view.

It said a domestic worker who has finished a permit or contract may apply for a new, independent permit like any other employee.

A draft law to keep such workers in household service or send them home, it argued, would place an unjustified curb on freedoms protected by the Constitution, namely the freedom to choose work and the freedom to contract, which may only be limited in rare, well-founded cases.

The government added that the plan would run against the Labour Law for the Private Sector on equal treatment and Bahrain’s duties under ILO Convention No. 111 on discrimination in work.

Warning

They warned of overlap and conflict between the Labour Market law and the Labour Law for the Private Sector, which would cut against aims of a fair, clear and efficient market.

The government said there is no clear need for new law and called for a rethink that keeps order in the labour market while upholding rights given to all workers in the Kingdom.