Manama, September 20: Bahrain has 40,000 illegal expatriate workers that did not leave the country after the end of their work permits.
The new statistics are mentioned in a report of the Financial Audit Court (not released), some of which was published last week in the Al Waqt newspaper.
This increase in figure follows the success in reducing the number of runaway cases from 30,000 to 4,000 after the six-month amnesty in 2007.
The report reveals that the cost of renewing the permits of workers to legalise their stay could reach BD7 million.
The report holds the Labour Market Authority (LMRA) responsible for not pursuing the cases of such workers.
Although the LMRA has recruited 40 inspectors to regularly visit work sites to check the commitment of companies to not recruiting illegal workers, the report criticises the authority for not asking those inspectors to provide information about their bank accounts to eliminate or reveal cases of bribe.
The Court is an independent body that comes under His Majesty the King, which is responsible for reviewing the annual performance of government and semi-government organisations, in terms of irregularities, corruptions or administration errors.
—Agencies