Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Labor Hotline: Kuwait Society for Human Rights



Arab Times
July 12, 2017

KUWAIT CITY, July 11: Kuwait Society for Human Rights has launched a “hotline 22215150” to raise awareness of migrant workers in Kuwait of their various legal rights and duties. Khalid Al-Hamidi, Chairman of the board of Kuwait Society for Human Rights, said that the hotline operates in five different languages: “Arabic, English, Filipino, Hindi and Urdu” in order to receive as many inquiries as possible about labor laws, ministerial decisions and legal procedures to protect rights.
He pointed out that this contributes to the reduction of abuses and violations that occur against migrant workers. He also added, “Through the hotline, legal advice can be sought as it will be answered by specialized experts and it provides a service of responding to all the migrant workers’ questions on laws and procedures concerning labor rights”.


He pointed out that the hotline received many complaints, including: “cancellation and transfer, recovery of passport, claim for financial dues, final cancellation of travel and a number of problems faced by migrant workers.” He said that, during the past period 802 complaints have been received of which 259 are of cancellation and transfer, 175 of claims for financial dues, 122 of passport recovery, 78 of malicious absence, 68 of work suspension without payment, 46 of final cancellation of travel with claim for financial dues, 38 of violation of contract items by the employer to increase working hours more than stipulated in the Labor Law and 16 of work injury. He noted that the complaints were distributed according to the language into “243 in Hindi, 101 in Urdu, 306 in Arabic and 152 in English.” 

The hotline is one of the activities of the project “Together to educate migrant workers in Kuwait”, which is being implemented in partnership with the Embassy of the Netherlands in Kuwait to educate workers in Kuwait on their legal rights and mitigate the violations they face as most of them result from the workers’ lack of knowledge of their rights.

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I think this is a great step in the right direction.  It's also fabulous that a foreign country (The Netherlands) has stepped in and helped implement this project for Kuwait.  Outstanding work.

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