A cautious welcome to the news carried by the GDN on the last day of 2016 following numerous public concerns about “labour camps” in residential areas.
Simply had to be done as the numbers of workers in construction and industrial enterprises, have grown enormously.
Up from nearly 70,000 in 2005 and in the 2016 second-quarter alone, doubling that figure, in just a decade, to 140,907.
The spillover of this human flow, allows unscrupulous landlords to create virtual labour camps within suburbia.
Illegally renting out such places, and forcing labourers, or their hiring companies, to meet the costs.
Consequently, labourers live cheek by jowl, five or six to a room.
Now a bevy of bureaucrats from a number of ministries are fulminating over plans to set up “labour camps” so that all labourers will go into a sort of cantonment and spare the suburbs of their being.
No doubt alarming the “local old boys”, who usually care little about the welfare of their charges, places without fire alarms or easy and clearly marked exits.
Instead, just an arrangement to make money.
No wonder there have been numerous fire related deaths, people unable to escape from their seedy death traps.
Inspectors should be able to inspect these illegal places, at any time but all too often shy away because that would be “infringing on private property”.
This is where the law really is a horse’s ass.
There is an “illegal” activity and just as there’s power to raid a brothel, “empower” inspectors, accompanied by police, to conduct something akin to the brothel raid.
Don’t just give excuses and hide behind a silly law – change it!
The fear is that the labour camps will become a ghetto and that will be avoided if the Prime Minister’s orders that such camps should meet international human rights and welfare standards, provide shops and even a movie theatre as a form of recreation for workers after what we Australians say, “a hard day’s yakka”.
There should also be examination of travel time, to and from work sites, and that workers’ wages or working hours are not extended by the rigours of having to live possibly further away.
There must be regular maintenance and inspections of facilities, including fire alarms in the camps, standards maintained by the workers and management alike.
Often the blocker in Bahrain, slow administrative decision making, co-ordination and action.
There is a pressing need to agree to the camps, and move quickly.
Then, there’s the sound move – long overdue – to actually gather then analyse meaningful visitor data.
Raw statistics merely listing numbers of how many people come to Bahrain each month was laughable, tourism industry needs to know why, what for, length of stay, interests, to gear actions and promotions to the tourist base.
Simply “bodies through the turnstiles” at the airport and Causeway are largely useless, other than as an ego boost
Knowing why people come and related data is intrinsic to all tourism planning.