He was speaking at a Press conference along with Deputy Abdaali Mohammed Hassan at the society headquarters in Zinj yesterday.
Jamri said that the proposal which topped their agenda when parliament reconvened this month would help about 78,000 Bahrainis.
“Most of the employees in the private sector earn less than BD200 which is not enough compared to the rising standard of living. We want to improve the level of salaries offered to job-seekers,” said Jamri.
He added that last year’s surplus from oil revenues could be used for the exercise. “The surplus of last year, which is about BD281 million, could be used for the increment in the private sector. There are new jobs being created and every year about 12,000 job-seekers enter the market who should not be underpaid,” Jamri said.
The bloc has referred the bill for reviewing to the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee. “We are cooperating with other blocs like Al Mustaqbal for seeking majority to pass the bill in parliament. We want it to be implemented by the end of this year,” Jamri said.
The issue of increasing the salary in the private sector was also raised this week by Deputy Jalal Fairooz in his majlis. He urged the authorities to set a minimum wage of BD200 for those holding secondary certificates or below, BD250 for diploma holders and BD300 for those with Bachelor’s degrees or above.
Fairooz added that the bloc was studying proposals for amending the unemployment insurance scheme of deducting one per cent from public and private sector employees. He called on deputies to voluntarily pay two per cent of their salaries for this scheme.
The plight faced by private sector employees in the Kingdom was highlighted in a report prepared by the now defunct Bahrain Centre for Human Rights this year which stated that 70 per cent of the Bahraini workforce was in the private sector and out of this 48 per cent were not earning more than BD200 per month.
Attributing the General Organisation for Social Insurance (GOSI), the report stressed that the total number of the workforce in the private sector last year was 313,039 and the average wage in the private sector was BD214.
The report also stated that 18,000 Bahrainis who worked in the private sector were paid less than BD200 while 60 per cent of pensions in the private sector did not exceed BD250 which contradicted the minimum pension of BD180 set by the government.
