These days I have seen numerous cases where the employment contract of the employee uploaded at LMRA's website for the visa is different than the one really signed by the employee. The contract which employee has will be showing more salary than the contract uploaded on LMRA's website.
As you understand forgery is a crime and you can use this document to punish the person who has wronged you for a long time. The reason for forging your employment contract could be as follows:
1. Paying lesser amount of GOSI
2. Paying lesser indemnity
3. Paying lesser compensation
4. Paying lesser end of service benefits.
5. Court will give the lesser amount to employee on basis of forged contract
6. Forgery is a habit.
Please note last week an employer was sentenced to 6 months jail for forging the contract. If you believe your employer might have done the same then go to LMRA and ask for the contract copy and see whether it is the same as signed by you. If not then you definitely can file a police complaint against the employer.
One important thing to note is as I heard from some clients the LMRA at Mina Salman doesn't provide the contract copy so try at other branches.
Forged Employment Contract
Very good point.
This, by the way, is literally STANDARD practice by employers in Bahrain and especially for senior roles. What they do is that they give the employee an offer letter and then have them sign a different offer letter for LMRA visa. Then they may or may not prepare two contracts - usually they only prepare the one for MOL and have the employee sign it.
At senior roles, when your package is above 4-5K BD and the GOSI cut-off is 4K; employers list salary as 4K and justify in their mind that they are paying the full GOSI that is due so they are not taking money away from the Government. One of the reasons employers do this is that they don't want problems with visas by listing too high a salary and then getting a push back to hire locals at a higher designation. But practically speaking, the individual gets impacted on EOS.
At junior roles, it is for sure an attempt to defraud the Government and save the cost.
In terms of offer letter copy, it is uploaded in the EMS system and becomes part of the employee documents. This can be seen anytime by the employer after logging in. So this means that this is readily available in the system. The question is how to get it. I think that the only branch that can help is the LMRA main head office. Mina salman is only for clearing agencies. But they may ask for a Ministry of Labor case reference to hand you this record.
Agree with you. There is another issue as well. Many people don't know anything at all about the employment contract which is uploaded at LMRA's website. At the stage of litigation when the company bring another contract then employees realize that their signatures were forged and they have never signed the contract coming from LMRA. This is not with reputed companies but with many companies its like this.
In three recent cases I have seen that employees have never signed the contract which they brought for us from LMRA.
Sanabis and Sitra LMRA have till now provided the copies while Mina Salman said bring a letter from court and once they said ask your lawyer to contact us which would result in unnecessary wastage of time so we always tell clients to avoid Mina Salman LMRA.
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