Kuwaiti Labour Court rules in

A Kuwaiti Labour Court has ruled in favour of about 750 Bangladeshi workers who have been complaining of non-payment and underpayment of salaries.
The Arab Times, a Kuwait-based English language daily, Tuesday quoted a Bangladeshi embassy official as saying that the court under the ministry of social affairs had ruled on the complaints filed by the Bangladeshis who were employed with a local cleaning company and were placed at various government establishments.
It was pointed out that the company was irregular in payments to them and that the employer also failed to renew their residencies. The court ordered the company to pay the workers two months salary and other benefits, in addition to shouldering the cost of their repatriation, reports said.
Bangladesh embassy officials were also quoted as saying that a total of 233 cleaners of the company had already been sent back to Dhaka and that the rest of the ill-fated workers will also be sent home in next few days.
‘The ministry of social affairs and labour is doing everything in its capacity to repatriate the workers and senior officials of the ministry are regularly monitoring the situation of the workers,’ the Arab Times report said.
According to the complaints received by the embassy, some cleaners alleged that they were being paid as low as KD 6 in compensation, even as the embassy has called upon the company to pay the workers not less than KD 20 as temporary compensation. Out of the 750 workers, about 300 are female cleaners. Residency permits of most workers have expired, reports said. Earlier, victim workers told the Arab Times that the company had filed false cases against some of them accusing them of absconding from work in an effort to deport them. The move was aimed at denying them their unpaid salaries. The workers were being paid a monthly salary of KD 20.
The workers had also alleged that they were facing serious food shortage and that some community members were providing them supplies out of kindness.
The Bangladesh embassy in Kuwait has taken some concrete measures to curb the exploitation of its workers by unscrupulous employers. To this end, the embassy henceforth checks the antecedents of a company before giving green light for recruitment of Bangladeshi workers.
Meanwhile, Bangladeshi workers in Kuwait, who began fresh strike protesting non-payment as well as deduction of salaries since Sunday, reportedly called off their strike following a settlement between the workers and the companies.
The Arab Times on Monday reported that some 6,000 workers of two cleaning companies enforced the strike demanding fixation of minimum monthly wage at KD 40 as per the Kuwaiti government order.
Since the issuing of the order, Kuwait government so far took action against at least five companies as they were continuing to deprive their workers of their fair salary and other facilities.