Bahrain cleaning contractor withdraws services

Cleaning contractor MBM Alam Flora has suspended all its operations in three of Bahrain's governorates, laying off almost 550 employees and withdrawing 140 pieces of machinery including trucks, tippers, bobcats, sewerage tankers and other equipment - including the refuse bins - from the streets.

According the Gulf Daily News, MBM Company Director & Chief Executive Officer Ahmed Bin Hindi says his company has no option but to withdraw its services as it has not being properly paid and had been unfairly blamed for the refuse collection crisis in the governorates it serves. He claims his company is owed BD1.9 million. He also complains that the Ministry is trying to bargain down the contract price too far, saying it will only pay BD6.5m for a one-year deal while MBM needs to charge BD9m to cover its costs.

The three municipal councils say it will cost less than that to hire local cleaning agencies for the work, until the newly-appointed contractor takes over later this year; MBM argues that it would cost BD725,000 per municipality per month - which amounts to BD2,175,000 a month total.

MBM says the final straw was when the temporary contract was only renewed for six months, from January this year, despite a request that it be renewed for at least a year. MBM is currently on its fifth temporary contract of sixth month duration, since the termination of its full-time contract with the three municipalities in July 2006, following complaints about the standard of its work.

MBM is hoping to relocate the employees that have been laid off, to the company's operations in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain in the UAE.

Gulf Daily News reports that the company already laid off some 400 workers when its full contract was cancelled. It says MBM claims the ministry then hired these same workers to continue doing the work - but charged MBM double for the pleasure of employing them - BD240 per worker per month, as opposed to the BD110 originally paid to them by MBM.

MBM also claims that the same thing has happened with regard to the equipment used on the contract and that the company is being billed far more than existing market rates would normally allow.

The French Veolia Proprete Sphinx Services and the Kuwaiti National Cleaning Company, which were hired by the government to support MBM with extra machinery, (but not manpower) some time ago, are expected to take over the contract until the French company takes it over officially in November.

20th March 2008