Bahrain ends sponsor system for foreign workers

The Gulf state of Bahrain will implement a new labor law that will end its longstanding requirement for all foreign workers to be sponsored by a national, a system that has drawn heavy criticism from human rights watchdogs, the country's minister of labor said on Monday.

From the beginning of August, the government will take over sole responsibility for organizing the kingdom's expatriate workforce with work permits issued for renewable periods of two years.

“The end of the sponsor system is the most important aspect of this law because in my opinion that phenomena does not differ much from the system of slavery and it is not something suitable for a modernized country like Bahrain,” labor minister, Majeed al Alawi, told a press conference in Manama.

The scrapping of the old system, which remains in force in the other Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, will allow expatriate workers to change jobs without having to seek their sponsor's permission and should bring to an end widely criticized abuses such as the sale of work permits.

The end of the sponsor system is the most important aspect of this law because in my opinion that phenomena does not differ much from the system of slavery and it is not something suitable for a modernized country like Bahrain

Labor minister

Labor Market Regulatory Authority, Ali Ahmed Radhi, said that Bahrain wanted to "conform to international regulations and human rights norms" regarding the employment of expatriate labor.

The new system should also allow greater flexibility in matching the migrant workforce to the kingdom's economic needs, he added.

Bahrain has a population of just over one million people, around half of whom are citizens.

It has an expatriate workforce of more than 300,000, the vast majority of them from Southeast Asia.