An "Asian tsunami" will hit the Gulf countries unless local residents stop relying on foreign labor to carry out the "simplest tasks", Bahrain’s Labor Minister Majid Bin Muhsin Al ‘Alawi told the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat.
The presence of almost 17 million foreign workers [1] in the Gulf, mostly from the Asian sub-continent, represents “a danger worse than an atomic bomb or an Israeli attack”, Al ‘Alawi warned.
According to the Bahraini minister, the number of foreign workers could reach almost 30 million in 10 years unless something is done to stop the influx.
He blamed the residents of the Gulf states of being "lazy and spoilt" and relying on imported labor for everything.
The total population of the Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait) is less than 40 million, and in some countries the number of foreign workers is greater than the number of local citizens.
Al ‘Alawi has previously called for the residency of foreign workers in the Gulf states to be limited to six years, but the leadership of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council has not followed up on his proposal.
“If the Gulf governments do not watch out for this tsunami of foreign laborers, the fate of this region is very worrying,” Al ‘alawi said.