A new ILO report has shown that the 'Wage Protection System' (WPS), which has been in place for 14 years in the Gulf countries, has not been implemented effectively.

The joint report prepared by the ILO and the Executive Bureau of the Council of Ministers of Labour and Social Affairs of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states (EB-GCC) was made public in Geneva on Sunday.

This report raises questions about the implementation, effectiveness and weaknesses of the ‘WPS’ implemented for the protection of workers in the Gulf.

The report states that the risk of changes in the contracts given to workers by employers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, the main destinations of Nepali workers, remains high. Nepali workers in the Gulf are facing problems of changes in the salaries mentioned in the contracts and not receiving regular salaries. About 1.5 million Nepalis are working in the Gulf region alone. Hundreds of Nepali workers reach the relevant Nepali embassies there every day with the problem of not receiving salaries.

The WPS was launched by all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - to monitor the payment of wages to private sector workers. After the UAE first implemented the WPS in 2009, other GCC countries also implemented the system through banks, exchange houses and government agencies.

The system is based on the ILO's Security of Wages Convention, 1949, and Recommendation, 1949. The system was designed to enable the government to directly monitor whether workers are paid their wages on time and correctly. Saudi Arabia (2013), Oman (2014), Qatar (2015), Kuwait (2015) and Bahrain have implemented the WPS since 2021.

Useful in salary security but implementation limited

Man Bahadur Tamang, who works in the UAE, told Kantipur that he has not received his salary for two months. ‘I have not received my salary for two months.’ The company does not listen to me about this,’ he said.

‘The WPS has exposed problems such as non-payment of salaries, delays in payment or arbitrary layoffs.’ But there is ample scope for its effectiveness to be further expanded, the ILO report says. ‘The scope of the salary security system should be expanded in law and implemented in practice to cover all workers and sectors.’

The report suggests, ‘Detailed information should be mandatory in the Salary Information File (SIF) that contains salary details, and gratuities should also be brought under the WPS.’

According to the report, many workers are still outside the WPS. ‘This does not include government employees.’ Most domestic workers are not even there, the report states, “Saudi Arabia has recently brought all employers of domestic workers under the WPS. The UAE has also expanded the scope of some domestic workers. However, overall, this group, which is most likely to be deprived of wages, is outside the WPS in many countries.”

No accurate information on wages

In all Gulf countries, employers must provide workers with a ‘Salary Information Receipt (SIF)’. This discloses the workers’ actual wages, deductions, and payment details.

In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, wage reconciliation is carried out at both the institutional and individual levels. In Qatar and Kuwait, monitoring is carried out only at the individual worker level. Although the structure has been established in Bahrain and Oman, strict implementation has not yet begun.

Workers in these countries are subject to double contracting. The main reason for this is that the minimum wage for workers is not fixed. Apart from Qatar, there is no minimum wage for unskilled workers in other countries. Even if Nepal is ready to take workers at the salary specified, the practice of employers changing the contract after reaching the destination country is not new. The

report has recommended preventing violations in the name of administrative ‘technical errors’, providing detailed salary details to workers, and making employer’s documentary evidence and labor approval mandatory. The report has pointed out that ‘itemized payslips’ are necessary to increase the transparency of WPS. Most GCC countries have not made such important payslips, which contain all salary details, mandatory.

Ban on employers who do not pay salaries

In the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, there are also financial penalties for employers who do not pay salaries. However, the punishment is decided by a separate judicial or administrative body, not by the WPS structure.