Parliament approves bill to accommodate hike in expat fees

The Parliament has passed an amendment to the Employment Act, designed to raise fees paid to the government to recruit expatriate workers.

The government bill was sponsored by North Kulhudhuffushi MP Mohamed Daud.

The bill was reviewed by the Security Services Committee, which presented its report to the floor on Monday. It passed with a majority vote of 65-10.

Qasim Ibrahim, the parliamentary representative of Maamigili constituency and leader of the government aligned Jumhoory Party (JP), had expressed opposition to the bill during committee meetings. He was absent when the Parliament took its final vote on the bill in the afternoon.

The law current prescribes an annual quota fee of MVR 2,000 and a fee of MVR 350 for work permits for expatriate workers.

Both fees must be paid by employers.

The bill passed on Monday introduces provisions that allow the government the option of reviewing the fee rates every 18 months. It also states that the revised rates must be capped at 30 percent of the existing rates.

The bill also introduces penalties for employers who are neglectful of expatriate workers, including publicizing information of offending employers, fining them by MVR 50,000 and suspending their permit to recruit expatriate workers.

According to the bill, the acts that will be deemed neglectful includes withholding salaries, having expatriate workers perform a job other than the one they were originally recruited for, denial of basic necessities, and forcing expatriates to commit illegal acts during the recruitment process.

The law currently requires that the number of unskilled workers from each source country to be capped at 100,000.

However, the new bill empowers the cabinet to set quotas for recruitment of labor from individual countries.

According to the new amendment, the quotas for labor as well as the fields of work will be determined under the advisement of the cabinet, following an assessment on the effect on the country’s labor market.

As per the bill, the assessment should cover the challenges facing the labor market, the demand for foreign labor in key fields, the number of expatriate workers and illegal workers.

This provision sparked concern from lawmakers from the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), who said that it empowers the Home Minister to authorize “unchecked” recruitment of expatriate workers.