On a separate note and what’s really worth making a note of is the comical response of a group of contractors said that thousands of Dinars would be lost through slowdown in major projects, this statement was even further amplified by Arabic newspapers that suggested that the losses won’t be in thousand but actually millions of dinars!

You want to know where the loss is?

I don’t know if many people in Bahrain know this, but many if not all contractors in Bahrain give the poor labor 2 or 3 jobs to do during the day, specially the contractors that offer labor like cleaners and security services, reason being, if you have this poor soul working one job a day then you are only making money from one company where as when you have him working from three deferent companies they make you 2 times as much and by the time they are on the way home they don’t have the energy to go and work somewhere else with out making extra money for the company.

Now that the government have this break forced to them, they can’t use these 4 hours to send the guy work somewhere else coz one hour is lost on transport and another 3 minutes on him washing up and changing, and even if the manage to do that the worker will have no energy to go back and dig or drill or do what ever it is he is supposed to do.

The lame excuses that contractors come up with regarding anything that goes against their will, is digusting. Remember the rule against transporting laborers in open trucks? Remember all the fuss that contractors made because they were forced to transport their workers in a more humane manner? (I saw an open truck with about 10 laborers being transported on my way home from work today) Anyway, I hardly feel sorry when I hear these contractors whining about losing millions of dinars. Their pockets are fat enough.

We still need to see stronger and more strict rules though, because, if left up the individuals themselves, we will see them work around it; “Ok, you cant work from 12-4, thats your sleeping time. You work the rest of the day and night.”

I believe the new decree specified the maximum working hours and such, “Labourers working more than eight hours must be paid overtime and a schedule, detailing daily working hours, must be placed in a visible area for workers and labour inspectors. They should not be working between noon and 4pm.” Check the source story above

We still need to see stronger and more strict rules though, because, if left up the individuals themselves, we will see them work around it; “Ok, you cant work from 12-4, thats your sleeping time. You work the rest of the day and night.”

Allah yahdeena ajma3een