Unemployed Bahrainis demand removal of labour minister
By DPA
Jun 6, 2007, 10:59 GMT
Manama, Bahrain – Unemployed Bahrainis demanded the removal of the labour minister during a protest over the apparent failure of the country’s employment project staged in front of the ministry offices in Isa Town, south of Manama, on Wednesday.
The call for Labour Minister Majid Bin Muhsin al-Alawi’s dismissal came after he claimed unemployment had dropped drastically and what the Committee for Unemployment and Low-Wage (CULW) called the failure of the country’s National Employment Project (NEP).
Unemployed Bahrainis demand removal of labour minister
By DPA
Jun 6, 2007, 10:59 GMT
Manama, Bahrain – Unemployed Bahrainis demanded the removal of the labour minister during a protest over the apparent failure of the country’s employment project staged in front of the ministry offices in Isa Town, south of Manama, on Wednesday.
The call for Labour Minister Majid Bin Muhsin al-Alawi’s dismissal came after he claimed unemployment had dropped drastically and what the Committee for Unemployment and Low-Wage (CULW) called the failure of the country’s National Employment Project (NEP).
‘The project has failed and there is a need to remove the minister from his post,’ CULW board member Hassan Abdulnabi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
‘We need political intervention to find a solution for the problem of unemployment and the minister is not fit for the post.’
Abdulnabi also dismissed as ‘unrealistic’ a suggestion by the minister that the unemployment rate had dropped to 4 per cent. Until two years ago, the unemployment hovered at around 16 per cent.
‘The minister needs to get out of his office to see the situation on the ground before he makes comments about unemployment.’
The CULW also lashed out at Minister of Social Affairs Fatima Bint Ahmad al-Balushi for suggesting in an interview earlier this week that unemployed Bahrainis were lazy and sought only comfortable government jobs.
‘Her comments were inappropriate and branded the unemployed and Bahrainis in general as lazy people, which is not true. We have been seeking jobs with appropriate wages for years now and the government is not addressing the issue,’ Abdulnabi said.
The 30 million Bahraini dinar (79 million US dollars) NEP project seeks to find jobs for the unemployed in the private sector via joint agreements with companies and training.
More than 18,000 Bahrainis signed-up for the program after it was introduced, with figures released in February 2006 suggesting that 14,700 out of the 18,931 registered had already been employed.
The figures also suggested the number of unemployed at the time stood at 4,231.
Police and CULW members sporadically clashed in late 2005 during protests to demand jobs and higher minimum wages, with some of the clashes turning violent.
The revival of the CULW activities comes just days after a picket against increasing poverty in the Gulf island where the president of the Shiite Islamic Action Society (IAS), Shaikh Muhammad al-Mahfud has criticized the government for failing to adopt sound economic policies in the past three decades. He has also claimed that this has caused Bahrain to fall behind on development compared to neighbouring countries.
© 2007 dpa – Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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