Can I offer an internship/probation as employer to expat

You are only allowed to hire Bahraini/GCC nationals without a work permit. Without a valid work permit, you are not legally allowed to hire an ex-pat in your workplace.

Some do it on a visit visa and an expired visa. But these are illegal if it comes to notice into LMRA through Inspection/Complaint from any third party. The employer will be fined.

Thanks

As above.  I have been witness to an lmra inspection visit on this and it's not pretty - saw people running out when inspectors came and subsequently a violation was also put on the CR.  Most people, if they want to assess an employee but not commit, go for a 6 month work permit, which is called a temporary work permit. Same process just shorter duration for employers who don't want to pay more in case employee doesn't fit - as you don't get refund of fees on cancellation.

Dear All,

As of now, the 6-month visa option is only available to existing employee renewals. SMEs is not allowed for any temporary work permit. We got an Official letter from the Ministry of Communication, as we had a govt project. It was addressed to LMRA to provide Temporary visas to our company. LMRA called me officially after receiving this letter at their end. Once I was at the department they informed me that a Temporary work permit was stopped in 2018. As I Had the official letter he confirmed with his superior and we never got the temporary work permit.

Thanks for the update.  Not surprised that they stopped.  I always wondered why they kept this option in the past.

What about outsourcing do you have any information about it.

I have done many outsource contracts for my company.  You need to have a clear contract with outsource company (for specific service and not a person) and the people they deploy should be on their visas.  You basically pay the outsource company for the service, irrespective of who they deploy and they pay them the salary in return. We did it for many non value adding departments (people performing these tasks were on our premises) eg secuiry, house keeping, payroll and in one case, finance / engineering services as well as standard outsourced services like travel desk, courier desk etc.

The distinction is critical ie you are sourcing a service and not an employee. As an example, you have a travel desk on your premises staffed by agency employees ie on their visas.  You will be paying more cost vs. the tickets because you asked them to keep employees on your premises but that is a ticket issuance service you requested - you didn't ask for specific employees to be deployed in the contract itself.