[Kuwait] Expat workers stage sit-in to protest 8 months without pay

Kuwait’s labour crisis continues to make headlines with the recent assembly of around 250 expatriate workers in front of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights in Kuwait City to protest 8 months of unpaid salaries, Arab Times reports.

The workers’ representatives told Al-Qabas daily that they tried in vain, on more than one occasion, to force company officials to pay their salaries but the company continued procrastinating.

Mashari Al-Sanad - head of the Committee for Migrant Workers at the Human Rights Society - spoke to the protesters and recorded their complaints in preparation for submitting a report and registering the Public Authority for Manpower’s (PAM) refusal to receive them.

Oppressed

Al-Sanad reportedly told the publication that these oppressed workers tried to communicate with the owner and management of the company to ask to give them their financial rights, to no avail. The committee head highlighted “two cases of workers who threatened suicide, and the representatives of the association reassured them and promised them to find a solution.”

A PAM official source denied that the authority refused to receive them and told Al-Qabas daily that the relevant department dealt with the workers’ complaint, and after confirming the validity of their claim, the employer’s file was suspended, noting that the labour complaint was being pursued. 

In addition, the source reportedly said that the Deputy Director for Labor Protection Affairs, Fahd Murad, had met with a number of affected workers and directed them to submit complaints through electronic systems.

Source: Arab Times

(Quote via original reporting)

Kuwait’s labour crisis continues to make headlines with the recent assembly of around 250 expatriate workers in front of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights in Kuwait City to protest 8 months of unpaid salaries, Arab Times reports.

The workers’ representatives told Al-Qabas daily that they tried in vain, on more than one occasion, to force company officials to pay their salaries but the company continued procrastinating.

Mashari Al-Sanad - head of the Committee for Migrant Workers at the Human Rights Society - spoke to the protesters and recorded their complaints in preparation for submitting a report and registering the Public Authority for Manpower’s (PAM) refusal to receive them.

Oppressed

Al-Sanad reportedly told the publication that these oppressed workers tried to communicate with the owner and management of the company to ask to give them their financial rights, to no avail. The committee head highlighted “two cases of workers who threatened suicide, and the representatives of the association reassured them and promised them to find a solution.”

A PAM official source denied that the authority refused to receive them and told Al-Qabas daily that the relevant department dealt with the workers’ complaint, and after confirming the validity of their claim, the employer’s file was suspended, noting that the labour complaint was being pursued. 

In addition, the source reportedly said that the Deputy Director for Labor Protection Affairs, Fahd Murad, had met with a number of affected workers and directed them to submit complaints through electronic systems.

Source: Arab Times

(Quote via original reporting)