Labour minister refutes report on violations in garment sector

AMMAN — Labour Minister Nidal Bataineh on Thursday refuted a report published by an international newspaper regarding alleged workplace violations in garment factories that export their products to the US, stressing that the news article was based on “incorrect information” dating back to more than 14 years.

Bataineh said that the report included a testimony of a worker who reportedly worked for a factory for 14 years without mentioning the name of the factory, adding that the report did not mention anything about filing a complaint to the Labour Ministry in its capacity as the relevant government institution for receiving such complaints. 

Instead, the report said that a complaint was filed at the National Centre for Human Rights, the minister said, noting that the ministry’s records show that no complaints were filed about the incident, according to a ministry statement.

The minister also said that after checking the lists of non-Jordanian workers, ministry employees failed to detect the name of the guest worker who is mentioned in the article and they found a similar name of an Asian national whose permit expired in 2018 and left the Kingdom in December 2019 after being detected working illegally in the Kingdom. 

Bataineh stressed that the ministry is in constant coordination with the Anti-Human Trafficking Department at the Public Security Directorate to follow up on similar incidents.

No complaints have been registered in the garment sector at qualified industrial zones regarding human trafficking incidents as the news report showed. 

The minister stressed that Jordan is a state with rule of law and institutions and consequently the Labour Law, among other laws, criminalises such violations.

He also said that a meeting was held a few days ago in coordination with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to discuss the news report in the presence of the representative of the International Labour Organisation and other stakeholders who expressed their “astonishment” over the “inaccurate report”.

Bataineh also said that the ministry’s inspection teams “closely follow up” on the conditions of guest workers in garment factories through  CCTV footage at the central operations room.

The CCTV installation “constituted a qualitative leap” in the inspection processes by the ministry, he added.