Expat worker makes plea for ‘fines relief’

TDT | Manama                           

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Reported by Zahra Ayaz

A worker who received hefty fines from the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) for working illegally is now appealing to the company to pay the penalty.

He claimed that he had been without a visa for roughly six months and that the company had held his passport.

Similar incidents are frequent throughout the Kingdom, with the majority of them involving either unpaid wages, unlawful employment, or bogus offer letters used to entice expatriates.

The Daily Tribune had previously covered a number of the aforementioned situations in the hopes that the government would move to improve working conditions for foreign nationals.

This case has highlighted the company’s fault for withholding expatriate employees’ passports and repeatedly delaying the application of the worker’s visa. An employee of a well-known restaurant who was speaking with The Daily Tribune stated: "First, the company gave me the offer letter.

When I arrived in Bahrain, they made me sign a passport handover declaration statement, and they said that I would get my working visa soon."

"Six months passed while I continued to work without a visa. One fine day, LMRA checked, and they discovered that I and the other eight members of the company were working illegally. LMRA gave the company BD1,000 in fines for each employee," he added.

He continued by saying that LMRA had fined him and the other eight workers for overstaying their grace period by BD500. He says that although the company paid the penalty, they failed to cover workers’ overstay fines.

"It is the company’s fault since they didn’t get us work visas." "We finally received our passports last week after pleading with the company for more than a month, but the fines have still not been paid. "We won’t be able to pay the fines with our basic wage of BD100, and we don’t even have enough money to return to our hometown," he lamented.

When asked if he was looking for assistance in this matter, he responded to The Daily Tribune, "I have filed a complaint against the company, and I hope the company can pay the fine so I can leave the country and go back to India, as I no longer wish to work here." The Daily Tribune attempted to contact the company in the interim but unfortunately received no answer.