In the latest painful blow to counterfeiters and manipulators in estimating the labour needs, who are actually traffickers and residency traders, Ministry of Interior, represented by the General Department of Residency Investigation, referred the head of a department in the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM) to the Public Prosecution on charges of forgery in estimating a company’s labour needs and increasing the number of workers on its file in exchange for financial benefit.
According to informed sources, officers from the General Department of Residency Investigation conducted investigations and discovered that the owners of four farms brought about 600 marginal workers to the country by falsifying their labor need estimate, reports Al-Qabas daily. They obtained large sums of money from these workers prior to their arrival in the country, and then laid off most of them to go out on the streets due to lack of real work for them.
The sources affirmed that the four cases have been referred to the Public Prosecution, revealing that the strangest of these cases was the estimation of a need issued by the Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR) to a citizen who did not even have a farm but had registered 130 workers under that fake farm.
They indicated that a “block” has been placed on the 600 workers, and some of them have been seized, while the whereabouts of the rest are known, adding that preparations are ongoing for their arrest and deportation from the country.
The sources said investigations and findings have revealed that the core of the problem began from PAM through the manipulation of estimate of labor need, adding that the Labor Inspection Department neglected to play its role, which in turn constitutes a wide window for the sale of visas and residencies. They highlighted a new approach adopted by the General Department of Residency Investigation in terms of re-filtering the estimate of the labor needs of large companies and farms in the country in order to uncover manipulators and counterfeiters.
Source : Arab Times
