MANAMA, 20 December 2004 — Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders, meeting in summit sessions here today and tomorrow, will take decisive action on a study submitted by the Bahraini king on the impact of foreign labor on GCC countries.
This was disclosed by Bahraini Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Dr. Majeed ibn Muhsen Al-Alawi at a press conference here yesterday. The study recommends that expatriate workers should not spend more than five years in a GCC country. The study also recommends that no GCC state should sign an agreement on expatriate labor without full coordination with other members of the regional grouping.
“The report is about the dangers posed by foreign labor on the social and cultural life as well as the economy of the six Gulf Arab countries,” said the minister.
Dr. Alawi said the report reflects the concern of GCC leaders on the dangers emanating from foreign labor at both the social and political levels. “It was presented to the GCC by the king of Bahrain in the first preliminary discussion of the summit that took place in Jeddah last year,” he said.
The minister also said that an extraordinary meeting was held after the Jeddah meeting to discuss the issue. “As a result of that, and on the sidelines of the Geneva conference, a six-member committee from the GCC countries met and submitted a draft to the labor ministers’ conference that took place in Kuwait last February.
“The paper, in short, says that there is a clear and existing danger from this problem and that it has a long-term effect on the demography of the region. It also says that ministers of labor should be given authority by GCC leaders to look into the problem and come up with solutions,” Dr. Alawi said.
“This growing number of foreign labor could change the demography of the region,” he stressed. “I want to make it clear that we are not against foreign labor. We need them for decades. All I am saying is that things should be controlled whether economically, or socially. We do not want these workers to become citizens in the region,” he added.
According to the minister, there are 12 million foreign workers in the Gulf region at the current stage and they are increasing at an annual rate of five percent.
On a question regarding the number of unemployed persons in GCC countries, Dr. Alawi said that “even if we employed all the citizens of the GCC, there would still be those who are unemployed and we would need foreign labor,” elaborating that the solution is not to stop foreign labor but to minimize its inflow.
“All countries in the GCC are being affected by the large numbers of foreign labor which are affecting every country’s culture and demography. These people are our guests, but organizing their flow is what needs to be done.”
The minister did not specify the country most affected by foreign labor in the Gulf and the country least affected, but gave an example of how some 60 percent of the United Arab Emirates’ population today are foreign workers.
“Sooner or later this will create big problems,” he asserted. “We have to form a strategy to find a way to solve this problem. And this will be discussed in the GCC meeting: How to find a way to deal with the problem at hand.”
He said the decision to come up with a solution soon could save future generations from having their culture lost, or realizing that the generation before did nothing. “I think we owe it to the future generations. If we do not come up with a solution now future generations will think that we did nothing when the problem was still maintainable. We have to show them that we realize the dimension of the problem now by discussing it,” he added.
The minister praised Saudi Arabia’s decision to allocate SR1 billion to train its youth, adding that every Gulf country has its own special status regarding how it deals with foreign labor.
On remittances of money by expatriates to their home countries, Dr. Alawi said: “$270 billion is transferred every year from this region to Asia alone. You can imagine what that money could do for the region if it was available inside.”
On a question regarding government discouragement to traders from relying on foreign labor or not hiring workers from a certain region, the minister stressed that Bahrain would not interfere in that matter.
“I do not impose any rules on a trader to import from a certain country or region. The state does not interfere in traders’ affairs. That is entirely up to them.”
Dr. Alawi said the GCC summit was trying to find solutions to problems evident in Gulf countries instead of issuing statements of denial. “If we had not felt the dangers from current problems we would not have called for a meeting to be held to begin with.”
He, however, did not specify whether or not the ministers of labor would give a time limit to find a solution to the growing number of foreign labor, and said the ministers were seeking to get full authority from the leaders to deal with the issue.
