Members of the Islamic Menbar, the third largest bloc in the Bahraini parliament, has proposed that special living zones be set aside for bachelor foreign workers in order to keep them away from Bahraini families, the Dubai-based newspaper Gulf News reported.
According to the motion, the special areas will be set up in industrial areas to separate expats from Bahraini families due to the vastly different social norms and behavioral attitudes, Dr. Ali Ahmed, the leader of the bloc, was quoted by the paper as saying.
In addition, Ahmed also suggested that the move would alleviate the road congestion created by the workers traveling to and from work, and that moving the expats to the special zones would create better living conditions for them. Today many workers live in dire conditions.
Around 520,000 foreign workers live in Bahrain, making up almost half of the country’s total population. Half of the workers are Indians who work as unskilled laborers in the construction sector. The two other main groups are from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Bahrain, like all the other Gulf countries, has turned to foreign workers to fill positions ranging from unskilled laborers to senior management, partly due to the lack of skills and knowledge of the native population but also because there are simply not enough nationals to take up all the opportunities created by the speedy development that the countries have gone through since the discovery of oil in the region.