The Labor Market Regulatory Authority (LRMA) of the Kingdom of Bahrain has announced that it has resumed the recruitment of domestic workers on Monday, September 14.
The country lifted the temporary suspension for hiring of workers it imposed last March, according to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Bahrain also said Filipino workers are preferred by most employers in the kingdom in reopening their doors to migrant workers.
POLO said Bahrain’s labor agency has warned would-be employers of migrant domestic workers to refrain from engaging the services of unlicensed expatriate employees’ employment offices in hiring domestic workers.
This is to ensure that mitigation measures against the spread of COVID-19 are strictly followed and workers’ rights are upheld and protected, POLO Bahrain said.
“61 manpower agencies were recently questioned in a series of raids jointly conducted by LRMA and the Interior Ministry, where said agencies were found to have been operating without license and were hiring run-away domestic workers of various nationalities, to provide hourly cleaning services,” the statement said.
LRMA’s Preventive Inspection Director Ahmed Junaid said these rogue manpower agencies move domestic workers from one household to another, posing a major threat to the spread of COVID-19 virus, prompting the government of Bahrain to take legal action against these erring agencies and their employees.
The shortage in the supply of domestic workers in Bahrain lured some to abscond and renege on their employment contracts that caused the proliferation of hourly paid cleaning services in Bahrain.
The number of Filipino domestic workers in the kingdom dropped abruptly by 9%. From 18,663 domestic workers in 2019, only 16,576 remained as of June 2020.
Junaid said recruitment agencies made random interviews among employers in Bahrain where Filipino workers emerged as most preferred over migrant workers from other countries
