DOHA: Manpower agencies in the GCC states have joined hands to put pressure on labour-exporting countries so they do not “impose conditions and demand more wages for their workers”.
A forum of regional recruitment agencies set up recently wants to emerge as a pressure group and is vying for recognition from the GCC Secretariat-General in Riyadh.
The forum says the few major labour-exporting countries are the main beneficiaries of the huge yearly worker remittances routed from the GCC states annually so they must “cooperate and lie low”.
There are an estimated 18 million expatriates in the GCC countries and they together remit more than $80bn to their home countries on average yearly, says the forum’s deputy chief.
Ali Hamad Al Afeefa, who represents Qatar Chamber in the ‘GCC Task Force of Recruitment Agencies’, said of the $80bn, a little less than half ($35bn) is remitted from Saudi Arabia alone, which has nine million expatriates.
And some 900,000 foreign workers based in Qatar send $7.5bn home annually on average, Afeefa said in comments published by local Arabic daily Al Raya yesterday.
The UAE, with a four million expatriate population, sees worker remittances flowing out of its territories to the tune of $16bn a year. Kuwait ranks third with an expatriate population of 1.6 million. Worker remittances from here average $12bn a year.
Oman, where expatriates total a million, annual remittance outflows are to the tune of $8bn, said Al Afeefa. Bahrain has nearly 400,000 foreign workers and yearly remittances average $2.5bn.
“Labour-exporting countries are gaining from these remittances, yet they are imposing conditions in contracts and demanding more wages for their workers,” said Al Afeefa. He said due to the above factors, recruitment costs for domestic workers have been going up in the GCC region as a whole and presently average QR3,500 per worker
And because of the intervention of the embassies of major labour-exporting countries, the wages of domestic workers have gone up by a huge 150 percent recently.
Al Afeefa cited India’s example and said it had upped the ceiling on the monthly salaries of domestic workers to QR1,500 from an earlier QR900.
The GCC Task Force of Manpower Agencies eventually wants the member-states to have a unified recruitment policy for domestic as well as skilled and professional workers.
“The job of identifying the requirements and providing suggestions and recommendations on how to develop the policy should be entrusted with the Task Force,” said Al Afeefa. “We want to ensure a fair system which both, the employers and employees, find just, and which complies with international standards,” he added.The Peninsula
