By IANS,
Dubai : Qatar is planning a new law that will deter expatriate workers from quitting their current job, leaving the country and then re-entering to take up a better paying job.
Qatar’s Advisory Council has recommended that expatriate workers leaving the country should not be allowed to return for five years from the date of their departure, the Gulf Times reported.
The Advisory Council or Majlis al-Shura is a consultative body and its recommendations will have to be approved by Qatar’s ruler to become a law.
The council has also recommended that expatriate workers should be denied the right to apply for residence permits for their parents.
According to the sponsorship law in effect now, expatriate workers are allowed to re-enter the country two years after their departure and can bring their parents along to live with them.
According to the newspaper, an internal committee at the Advisory Council said in a report on the draft law that a five-year ban would serve as a “deterrent for expatriates from quitting their jobs and returning to the country to take up a better-paid job with a new employer”.
“The change in the article would protect the rights of the first sponsor who bore the cost of bringing the worker to the country,” the report quoted a member of the council as saying.
“I think it would be a deterrent for expatriates tempted by better job offers within the country. They begin to create troubles for their sponsors once they find better chances.”
As for the plan to discourage expatriate workers from bringing their parents, he said that this “would only add to the pressure on all service sectors in the country”.
Qatar is home to around 200,000 expatriate Indians.