The government’s plans to make sure that all workers in the country are paid their wages through bank transfers are being implemented in three phases.

The first phase will cover companies with 500 and more employees, while in the second phase companies with 100 to 500 workers will be included.

In the third and last phase, all companies with less than 100 workers will be asked to transfer salaries of their workers to their respective bank accounts.

To be called ‘Wage Protection System’ on the lines of a system that is in place in the United Arab Emirates since 2009, it will be mandatory for all companies, whether private, government or semi-government, to transfer salaries of all their workers to their bank accounts.

The workers would need to be paid salaries in the first week of every month through

bank transfers.

Delays would attract punitive action in the form of fine.

Currently, a large number of companies do not transfer wages of their low-income workers to banks and rather pay them in cash.

These workers have no access to bank accounts.

This makes it difficult for the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare to monitor salary payments by companies, so there are delays and defaults in

several cases.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, it is understood, has almost completed a study to monitor online salary payments by companies once the ‘Wage Protection System’ is fully implemented.

An extensive database is being developed by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare which will specify who is to be included in the ‘Wage Protection System’ (WPS) and who is not.

Last month, banking regulator, the Qatar Central Bank (QCB), asked all banks to provide it account details of all their customers.

Companies, on the other hand, have been asked to provide the labor ministry salary details of all their employees.

The database for the Wage Protection System is reportedly being developed based on the above information. Banks will be opening accounts for hundreds of thousands of low-income workers in the country to

let the WPS work.

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