February
7, 2008 India Fixes Minimum
Wage for its Workers
in Bahrain By Aroonim Bhuyan
Dubai
Employers in Bahrain will have to pay a minimum salary of 100
Bahraini Dinars ($266) a month to unskilled workers from India
across all sectors.
"Effective from March 1, all unskilled workers from India in Bahrain
will have to be paid a minimum salary of Bahraini Dinar 100,"
India's Ambassador to Bahrain Balkrishna Shetty told IANS by phone
from Manama Thursday.
"This new salary benchmark already covered Indian housemaids since
October last year, but now it will include all unskilled workers,
including those in the construction sector," he said.
There are around 275,000 Indians in the Gulf nation, many of them
working as contract labourers in the booming construction industry.
The ambassador said from now on all such salaries would have to be
paid through banks, a system already being implemented in the United
Arab Emirates (UAE), another Gulf nation with a huge expatriate
Indian population.
"We are linking the wage structure with the cost of living and want
the salaries to be paid through banks," Shetty said. This will
protect workers from exploitation, inflation and the appreciation of
the rupee, he added.
The value of the US dollar-pegged Bahraini Dinar has been going down
in recent times.
Salaries of workers have also not been commensurate to the rising
oil prices globally.
Shetty said that the Indian mission has been working with the
ministry of overseas Indian affairs to put the new measures in
place.
Last month, Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi called
for the introduction of a widely accepted international norm of
linking the wage structure of overseas workers to the cost of living
in the respective countries.
"The rising cost of living combined with fall in the value of the
dollar has severely eroded the real wages that an overseas worker
receives," Ravi said, speaking at the fourth ministerial
consultation on overseas employment and contractual labour for
countries of origin and destination in Asia in Abu Dhabi.
"This has placed considerable stress on workers of all
nationalities. There is an urgent need to introduce a widely
accepted international norm for linking the wages structure to the
cost of living," he said.
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