Security campaign targeting unauthorised foreign workers begins

AMMAN — The ministries of Labour and Interior have confirmed that joint security campaigns to address the issue of unauthorised foreign workers have commenced. These campaigns aim to take legal action against both the workers and their employers.

Both ministries released a joint statement earlier in the day warning of the legal and “health risks” associated with employing workers illegally, and affirmed that fines of JD800 per worker per year will be enforced, and those who employ foreign workers illegally will be obligated to pay fines and repatriation-related expenses. 

According to recent data from the Department of Statistics, the unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2023 decreased by 0.9 points to reach 21.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2022.

Minister of Industry, Trade, and Supply, and Minister of Labour, Youssef Al Shamali, said that the government's Economic Modernisation Vision, launched last year, aims to employ one million young men and women within 10 years, increase per capita income by 3 per cent annually and raise the satisfaction rate related to the quality of life among Jordanians to 80 per cent.

Abla Amawi, secretary-general of the Higher Population Council (HPC), in a previous statement said that in 2015, approximately 30.6 per cent of the population, or 2,918,000 individuals, were non-Jordanians residing in Jordan.

Syrians, Egyptians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Yemenis and Libyans accounted for the majority of non-Jordanians with a total of 2,720,000 individuals, representing 93.2 per cent of the Kingdom’s non-Jordanian population. 

Jordan's population reached 9,531,712 in 2015, increasing to around 10.81 million individuals in 2020.

Syrians constituted the largest percentage of non-Jordanians residing in Jordan at 43.4 per cent, followed by Egyptians at 21.8 per cent and Palestinians at 21.7 per cent. 

The gender ratio among non-Jordanians was 135 males to 100 females, indicating a significant presence of male-dominated migrant workers, as mentioned by Amawi.

Jordan hosts the largest number of refugees per capita worldwide. By the end of 2018, approximately 1.3 million of Syrian refugees were residing in Jordan. The HPC announced that at the end of 2019, the Kingdom hosted around 57 different nationalities of refugees, constituting approximately 31 per cent of the country’s total population.

In January 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that over 750,000 registered refugees, including 90,000 non-Syrian refugees, were living in Jordanian cities and towns.