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DE RUEHMK #0571/01 1701436
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 191436Z JUN 07
FM AMEMBASSY MANAMA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6943
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHBVAKS/COMUSNAVCENT  PRIORITY
RHMFISS/HQ USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL PRIORITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MANAMA 000571 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/11/2017 
TAGS: ECON ELAB PGOV PREL PHUM BA HUMRIT REFORM
SUBJECT: GOB EMPLOYMENT AND WAGE INITIATIVES SHOW MIXED 
RESULTS 
 
REF: MANAMA 219 
 
Classified By: Ambassador William T. Monroe for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
. 
 
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Summary 
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¶1.  (C) Bahrain's National Employment Project (NEP), which 
government officials have credited with reducing the rate of 
unemployment from 16 percent to 3.7 percent, will come to a 
close at the end of June.  Of 19,625 registrants in the 
program, according to GOB statistics, just under 6,000 remain 
unemployed.  Approximately 22 percent withdrew from the 
program, most of them women, and are no longer counted by the 
government to be among the unemployed.  Bahrain Training 
Institute (BTI) officials told Poloff June 13 that the NEP 
had trouble placing women in certain job sectors, primarily 
due to cultural bias in the workplace.  Since 74 percent of 
NEP registrants were women, this moderated the level of 
success of the overall program.  On June 3 Minister of Labor 
Dr. Abdulmajeed Al Alawi announced the start of a new program 
of unemployment benefits to begin November 22.  Since the 
announcement, there has been resistance to the proposed 
funding mechanism for the program:  a mandatory one percent 
deduction (income tax) from the salaries of most workers in 
the country, which will then be matched by a government 
contribution.  End summary. 
 
--------------------------- 
National Employment Project 
--------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) Press reports June 2 carried updated statistics on 
the government's NEP, which has been touted by government 
officials as having reduced unemployment in Bahrain from 16 
percent to 3.7 percent in the space of 18 months.  According 
to Ministry of Labor Assistant Undersecretary for Training 
Ahmed Al Banna, the program is scheduled to complete its 
activities at the end of June, at which time the registration 
for unemployed workers will be conducted at the Ministry of 
Labor and at the unemployment centers in each of the 
country's five governorates.  Al Banna stated that the total 
number of registrants under the program had reached 19,625 
and that the program directly resulted in job placements for 
7,825, a 40 percent success rate.  In addition, several 
thousand registrants found jobs through their own initiative 
while participating in the program's activities.  The total 
number of those trained through the NEP was 6,069, and the 
current count of unemployed is 5,941, according to Al Banna. 
 
¶3.  (U) Per an earlier set of NEP statistics released in 
February 2007 (reftel), which included 18,580 registrants, 22 
percent (4,132 people) had withdrawn from the program.  For 
example, 1,654 (8.9 percent) had withdrawn because they would 
only accept day-shift jobs with the government.  According to 
Al Banna, most of these were women.  (Note:  Although there 
were some government jobs available through the program, the 
number was not sufficient to employ all those who insisted on 
public sector work.)  Another 1,363 (7.3 percent) had 
registered but then did not respond to calls from the program 
to appear for orientation.  Just under two percent (359) left 
the program to pursue further studies, and 190 (1 percent) 
rejected all three job opportunities offered to them and were 
therefore ineligible to continue.  All of these individuals, 
plus those in several other categories, were considered to 
have left the program voluntarily and are no longer 
considered by the Ministry to be unemployed.  (Comment:  This 
move, as well as the government's decision to count only 
those who signed up for the NEP as unemployed, account for 
the steep drop in the official unemployment rate from 16 to 
3.7 percent.) 
 
------------------------------------- 
Bias Against and Challenges for Women 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶4.  (C) Nizar Al Qari, the former head of the marketing unit 
for the NEP and currently with the Bahrain Training Institute 
(BTI), told Poloff June 13 that although the program had 
great success placing those seeking jobs in some sectors, 
there was difficulty in others.  For example, male workers 
who received training in trade skills, such as carpentry, 
construction, electrical wiring, and aluminum processing, 
were placed into jobs immediately.  The very few women who 
were interested in these fields had great difficulty being 
hired.  Employers were reluctant to introduce women into work 
environments that have traditionally been filled by men.  Al 
Qari admitted that these hiring practices were 
 
MANAMA 00000571  002 OF 003 
 
 
discriminatory, but that it took much time to overcome this 
type of cultural bias.  He said there was a higher number of 
women interested in fields such as accounting and graphic 
design, which would appear to be mixed gender careers, but 
even trained women in these fields had a difficult time 
finding placements.  This presented a problem for the NEP 
program because 74 percent of the participants in the program 
were women. 
 
¶5.  (C) Al Qari expressed some disappointment with aspects of 
the program that were not true to the initial design.  He 
said that the crowning feature of the program was supposed to 
have been an assessment of the aptitudes and abilities of 
registrants before they were to be counseled on placement in 
training or directly to work.  This part of the project was 
out-sourced to EFI International, an Australian firm with 
expertise in the area.  Al Qari said that early in the 
program, Minister of Labor Al Alawi was dissatisfied with the 
speed at which program participants were being placed, so he 
decided to circumvent this portion of the placement, against 
the advice of EFI.  The lack of a proper assessment combined 
with undertrained job counselors undercut the quality of the 
placements and therefore harmed the long-term job 
satisfaction of those who were placed in jobs. 
 
¶6.  (C) In a June 13 discussion about the role of the BTI in 
the NEP, director Hameed Saleh confirmed that BTI provided 
the bulk of the training for NEP participants, and that the 
final batch of trainees would finish their programs in 
August.  (Note:  BTI graduates 800-1000 regular students, not 
NEP trainees, each year and boasts an 84 percent job 
placement rate.)  He said that in addition to BTI, some NEP 
participants received instruction from the Bahrain Institute 
for Banking and Finance, and others received training as 
nurses and optical technicians at alternate sites.  Saleh 
echoed the challenges of placing women in many jobs and said 
that the greatest number of openings for women in the market 
is in the retail sector, with some openings in banking, 
finance, and information technology.  However one challenge, 
he said, is that jobs in retail involve interacting with the 
public, and families are reluctant to allow women to take 
retail jobs.  Second, many women have lived sheltered lives 
and lack effective interpersonal skills to deal with the 
public in the retail environment.  And third, many women in 
the NEP program are not interested in full time employment. 
To counter the last of these obstacles, the program has tried 
to encourage employers to consider part-time "job-shares" as 
an alternative, where two or three women make up a full-time 
equivalent, but only a few employers have agreed to the 
experiment. 
 
---------------------- 
Unemployment Insurance 
---------------------- 
 
¶7.  (U) On June 3, Minister of Labor Al Alawi told the press 
that a new unemployment insurance program would begin 
operation November 22.  Modeled after aspects of the NEP, and 
channeling those still unemployed from the NEP, the program 
will register unemployed workers, then offer them a stipend 
for up to six months while they receive relevant job skills 
training.  Minimum benefits for those with education up to 
the level of a high school graduate is BD 120 ($318) monthly, 
while university graduates will receive BD 150 ($398). 
Workers who are newly unemployed will reportedly receive 60 
percent of their former salary up to a maximum of BD 500 
($1325) per month.  After completing training, each trainee 
will be offered up to two job opportunities.  If a trainee 
refuses both opportunities, he will be considered unwilling 
to work and no longer eligible for the program and its 
benefits. 
 
¶8.  (U) The GOB's intent to fund the program through a one 
percent deduction from worker salaries, which the GOB will 
then match, has drawn resistance from both public and private 
sector workers.  (Note:  There is no income tax in Bahrain.) 
The press reported June 16 that an independent national 
committee had formed to oppose the salary deduction. 
Ministers, parliamentarians, members of the armed forces, and 
public security personnel reportedly are among those who will 
be exempt from the deduction.  Blogger Mahmood Al Yousif 
explained in a June 16 Weblog entry that the objection of 
some clerics is that under Islam people cannot be forced to 
give up part of their income without their willing consent. 
Money obtained in this way is considered "tainted," and thus 
it is forbidden for either the government or unemployed 
individuals to accept it.  Hence, he goes on, rather 
sarcastically, Al Wifaq MPs are backpedaling from a royal 
decree establishing the unemployment insurance scheme that 
they passed unanimously at the beginning of the parliamentary 
 
MANAMA 00000571  003 OF 003 
 
 
session, on the basis that it would help their constituents, 
now that clerics are weighing in against the program.  MPs 
claim they did not know at the time of the vote how the GOB 
was planning to raise funds for the program. 
 
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MOL Wage Subsidy 
---------------- 
 
¶9.  (U) In an effort to raise the floor of wages in the 
private sector, the Ministry of Labor's Committee to Improve 
Wages and Productivity has been seeking the partnership of 
companies in Bahrain to boost salaries.  In the absence of a 
minimum salary in the private sector, the ministry has set a 
level of BD 200 ($530) per month, but only for Bahraini 
workers.  For workers currently earning less than this 
amount, the ministry pledges to pay up to BD 50 per month for 
six months.  During that interval, the ministry also offers 
training to these workers to increase their productivity.  At 
the end of the six month period, the company will be 
responsible to maintain the BD 200 salary and, hopefully, 
will have a more productive employee.  The ministry announced 
June 8 that an additional 25 companies had signed on to the 
plan, bringing the total number of companies who have pledged 
to participate to 420, thereby raising the salaries of almost 
14,000 Bahraini workers.  Although it is the ministry's 
desire to have all private sector companies participate in 
the program, some companies have expressed skepticism that 
the program can ensure higher productivity and anticipate 
that the program will not last long. 
 
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Comment 
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¶10.  (C) Although it is clear that the NEP has contributed to 
greater employment of Bahrainis, the unemployment percentage 
of 3.7 is positively skewed by the Ministry of Labor's 
limited definition of who is unemployed, even when taking 
into account the statistical effect of housewives merely 
looking for a change of scenery, not a job.  One positive 
effect of the NEP has been the drop in the number of 
demonstrations by disenchanted unemployed, which resulted in 
low-level violence in 2005.  The program to a great extent 
took the wind out of the sails of protesters looking for a 
reason to fight the government. 
 
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Visit Embassy Manama's Classified Website: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/manama/ 
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MONROE