Ammon News - AMMAN — The Labour Ministry has sealed around 155 establishments and warned 1,721 others for violating the labour regulations, Labour Minister Nidal Katamine said on Tuesday.

He added that labour inspectors found those institutions recruiting illegal foreign workers in violation of the ministry’s regulations.

“We have been repeatedly warning employers not to recruit guest workers who do not have legal permits and stressed that we will not hesitate to enforce the law,” Katamine said.

He noted that the ministry has intensified a recently launched crackdown on illegal workers and their employers.

Of the violating establishments, the official said, more than 810 have been blacklisted for recruiting Syrian refugees who are not allowed to work in the Kingdom, adding that the ministry will soon shut down another 100 establishments for failing to abide by the regulations after they had been warned repeatedly.

The ministry has given illegal guest workers two weeks to rectify their situations, risking repatriation with no possibility of re-entry into Jordan.

According to the ministry, more than 800,000 workers from different nationalities are working in the Kingdom, mostly Egyptians, including 175,000 who hold no work permit.

The minister noted that around 50 per cent of workers who have been reported to the ministry as abandoning their workplace are employed in sectors other than those included in their work permits.

“Most of the workers who illegally change their workplace are from the agricultural sector. The campaign is not aimed to target a specific group or nationality; rather, it is aimed at organising the labour market,” Katamine said, underlining a recent decision by the ministry to suspend recruitment of foreign workers in all sectors until further notice.

* by Hani Hazaimeh | The Jordan Times