Manpower Public Authority denies ignoring Filipino workers’ complaints

KUNA

The Kuwait's Public Authority of Manpower has taken a series of actions to safeguard rights of workers in defaulting companies, an authority official has said.

The authority never hesitates to take all legal action against companies that fail to fulfill financial commitments toward their workers, Deputy Director General of the PAM for manpower protection Abdullah Al-Mutawtah said in a press statement Tuesday.

He dismissed that the claims that the authority had not dealt with complaints of 1,000 Filipino workers in a company "due to political calculations" as "untrue". The number of Filipinos working for that company is less than 500 and only 120 of them had filed complaints, he noted.

He went on to say that the authority has adopt a gradual approach to secure workers' rights without obstructing the government projects executed by the concerned company.
Relevant state institutions had been asked to pay the salaries and dues of the workers from the company's dues to them, he said.

Al-Mutawtah added that the authority urged government bodies not to renew contracts or ink new ones with this company. The authority also demanded government agencies to inform it if they abolished their contracts with the company and signed contracts with other companies in order to transfer the workers to the new companies, he said.

He, furthermore, pointed out that a decision was issued to approve all workers' requests to annual their contracts with the company and leave the country without the need for prior approval from the company.

It also stipulated that payment of all workers dues through the financial guarantee paid by the company to the tender commission, he said.

He stressed that the authority is receiving workers complaints through its branches across the country, its emergency team, and its roaming disputes unit which visit work sites in remote areas.

He noted that such a unit had registered about 850 complaints in one site, he said.