The Flexi Permit Experiment: No Kafala, but poor labour practices persist

Unsurprisingly, many Flexi-Permit workers who MRRORS.org spoke to recently revealed that they much prefer to have a sponsor who would pay for their residency permit rather than paying for it themselves, even if that means returning to the mercy of their sponsors under the restrictive Kafala arrangement.  

S*, an Ethiopian waitress who works at a restaurant in Manama says that she has been trying to find an employer to sponsor her visa for over a year, without any success.  “The problem is that wages are very low and anything I make goes to LMRA, I am not saving anything.” Recently, S* lost her income due to the pandemic and was unable to pay Flexi-Permit’s monthly fees. She now has an irregular status. 

According to reports, more than 12,000 - Opens in new tab Flexi-Permits have been cancelled since the scheme started, most likely due to lack of payment.  Given the austere conditions of Bahrain’s private sector, migrant workers continue to work and live in bleak conditions - Opens in new tab even when their visas are tied to the state.

But the high costs of the Flexi-Permit is only one aspect of the problem. Even if the permit was cheaper  (the government did reduce permit fees during the pandemic), the lack of protection for permit-holders - who are effectively ‘freelancers’ - under the labour law enables exploitative employment practices. The obligations of the client who contracts work to the permit holder are not clearly defined, and nor are the labour rights of the permit holder. Four years since its debut, grievance redressal and labour complaints for Flexi Permit holders are also still not prioritised; a labour lawyer in Bahrain told MR that the Labour Law does not apply to Flexi-Permit holders because they technically do not have an employer/sponsor, and that as such, they are only able to file cases against employers at civil courts, not labour courts. 

The Flexi-Permit must not be understood as a benefit to workers alone, but as an option that makes the labour market more dynamic, providing employers with an opportunity to use services on a need-basis. Its success, however, requires an environment that respects and protects, contractually and financially, the labour of the individual. The labels of kafala, Flexi Permit, temporary, migrants are all convenient to bracket workers into narrow silos, excluding them from any opportunity to fully participate in society. It is important to recognise the entire gamut of rights of the individual outside of these labels to which they have limited access. Fair wages, affordable housing, public transport, social security, freedom of expression, access to justice, and unionisation are fundamental rights that must be ensured first and foremost  — otherwise, reforms are merely performative.  

Recommendations

The Flexi-Permit has the potential to meaningfully protect the rights of migrant workers. In addition to our previous recommendations on Flexi-Permit, some immediate and long term actions that should be taken include:

Immediately:

• Establish a minimum hourly wage;
• Introduce a standard freelance contract that enumerates the rights and responsibilities of both parties;
• Stipulate maximum hours of employment with a contractor over a set period of months. This would help ensure that employers do not shirk responsibilities by using the services of Flexi-Permit holders as freelancers in what should be a bonafide employment relationship;
• Create a system where workers and their contractors/employers are able to log hours and payment for monitoring;
• Include Flexi-Permit holders in subsequent WPS phases;
• Set up mechanisms for dispute resolution;
• Include permit holders in unemployment benefits, in proportion to their contribution;
• Refund workers their Flexi-Permit travel deposit fee while they are in Bahrain;
• Remove travel bans on irregular Flexi-Permit holders.

In the long term:

• Expand eligibility of workers/sectors for Flexi-Permit;
• Allow unionisation;
• Allow permit holders to sponsor their families, based on their aggregate income over a period of time.