MANAMA, 21 January 2005 — Unemployed and underemployed Bahrainis have formed their own national committee to seek suitable jobs, compensation for unemployment, and to call for raising the minimum wage.

The committee, which launched an indirect election campaign to have 30 to 50 unemployed Bahrainis elected to its central committee, is expected to begin work in four weeks.

The move has been described by its organizers as a civil society effort to address the issue, and not aimed at the large community of foreign workers in Bahrain.

Committee founding members said that they would welcome government blessing for forming the committee, but affirmed that they would go ahead with their plans if it did not come.

“There are a number of committees and societies operating in Bahrain that have not received accreditation or had their credentials revoked by the Ministry of Social Affairs,” said Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja from the now dissolved Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

“This is an effort by the unemployed themselves to shed light on their problem and to have a committee that would represent them and their case”.

Al-Khawaja added that the problem of unemployment and underemployment continues to haunt Bahrainis because of the strong hold that some big businessmen and influential political figures have on the economy and the media outlets, which they use to resist the reform plans that the government began in recent years.

Abdulwahab Hussain, a well-known Bahraini political activist and a committee member, said that corruption, mismanagement, and discrimination — which he said was intentional at times — was to blame for the troubles in the labor sector.

There are no official figures about the number of unemployed Bahrainis, but the McKenzie report that was commissioned by the government last year and drew a lot of criticism following its release suggested that there was between 16,000 to 20, 0000 unemployed Bahrainis.

The report also suggested that the figures of the unemployed could skyrocket to 80,000 in 2013.

Former MP Ali Rabeeah, who is expected to be part of the new committee, said that the problem of unemployment in Bahrain was an artificial one, because of the large number of foreign workers in Bahrain.