Bahrainis Left with Low Pay Jobs as Foreigners Replace them

2023-01-14 - 10:20 am

Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): In all countries, an unemployment crisis is usually caused by economic crises or imbalances in the labor market, with the exception of Bahrain, where unemployment is the result of a political crisis caused by a ruling regime that fails to reconcile with the people.

More than 12,000 university graduates are unemployed, at least in a country that imports labor from abroad. They have no other option but to work jobs with very low wages. 500 of these unemployed are doctors of various specialties, who graduated from different local and foreign universities.

Instead of embracing these Bahraini doctors in government hospitals, doctors are brought in from India, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, and other countries from around the world. The Bahraini is not treated as a priority in his own country, but rather comes last after all other nationalities of the world.

There are no justifications for doing so, except that the ruling family, which holds power and wealth, hates its own citizens, and wants to replace them with foreigners in employment, leading to their complete replacement via an engineered demographic change process.

One of the unemployed female doctors, struggling with poverty and the need to work, was forced to work in a call center for a food delivery company, and other unemployed doctors were forced to work as cashiers.

One of her co-workers says we have to hear intolerable obscene language and insults every day from angry callers. "No one wants to hear insults directed at their mother, but we endure it because we have no alternative," he added.

And about the qualifications of the employees, he said: "I am an education graduate, and there is an employee who has an engineering degree along with the doctor, and other university graduates for sure."

This is the situation in a call center as described by an employee. How can this job be suitable for university graduates!

If the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Council Affairs likes these jobs, this doctor can replace this job of hers with the job of one of their children. Let the son of the Minister of Finance or one of the sons of the prime minister come and receive insults at the call center instead.

Why are Bahrainis of academic qualifications supposed to accept and work in such professions, while foreigners are brought in to fill specialized jobs that they, as Bahrainis, are denied?

And why do qualified Bahrainis have to endure such jobs, while the lazy members of the ruling family (as described by the British advisor Belgrave) enjoy jobs they do not deserve?

Unemployment is a political crisis deliberately being initiated by the ruling family, and until recently, it was caused for anti-Shia sectarian reasons but it later expanded to affect even Sunni graduates and citizens. Fingers cannot be pointed at the Ministry of Labor or the Civil Service Bureau.

The other thing is that it would be naive to blame parliament for even 1% of the problem, or to wait for it to provide solutions to it. This parliament in its current form is just another proof of the family's dominance and monopoly of the decision-making process.

The solution to the unemployment crisis can only be made at the top of the hierarchy of power, as is the case with other problems that the gulf kingdom suffers from, such as the issue of political prisoners and poverty. And this can only be made by a political decision that ends all previous decisions aimed at marginalizing citizens and impoverishing them in their homeland. Otherwise, statements issued by an MP here or another there will only be material for a good laugh.

 

Arabic Version