India's Ambassador to Bahrain, Dr. George Joseph stated last week that sponsors who fail to return the passports of their former employees within 30 days will be considered human traffickers; the Ambassador was quoting an undisclosed senior Bahraini official who attended an open house at the Indian Embassy in Adliya.
According to recent reforms under Bahrain's labor law, workers are given a grace period of 30 days without a valid visa to find a new sponsor. in order to apply for a new work visa under new employment sponsorship, the worker is understandably required to present his or her passport to appropriate facilitators. Ambassador Joseph commented that employers are now beginning to cancel the work visas of their employees but refuse to return passports within the required 30-day period, preventing them from applying for different jobs.
This is an important development since no Bahraini national has been prosecuted for trafficking charges since the Anti-Trafficking Law's inception over two years ago. The new option in Bahrain for workers to change employers is another step towards addressing the rampant injustices of the former sponsorship system that is still common-place throughout the region, and presents new opportunities to identify perpetrators of human trafficking and may prevent further exploitation of migrant workers.
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