Manama: Bahrain’s Constitutional Court has ruled as unconstitutional Article 20 of the draft traffic law that bars expatriates from driving unless their occupation required it.
The court said in its landmark on Wednesday ruling that the article did not comply with provisions of the constitution.
The Council of Representatives, the elected chamber of the bicameral parliament, had approved the controversial article in a bid to ease growing traffic congestion in the country.
Several MPs said that there were too many cars on the roads and that one solution was to limit the number of vehicles by barring foreigners whose job did not require them to use personal transportation from driving.
Expatriate employees would instead use company buses or public transport to and from their work, the lawmakers said.
Article 20 of the traffic law draft stipulates that “foreigners living in Bahrain could not obtain a driver’s license or drive a vehicle unless the nature of their work requires it.”
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) citizens are not concerned by the suggested ban, the article said.
The GCC is made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The article was also passed by the appointed members of the Shura Council, the parliament’s second chamber, with 15 votes to eight, following a plea by the chairman for a yes-vote in a bid to have the traffic law enacted after seven years of debates and arguments.
Several members said that they could not support an article that would discriminate between people or that was most likely to cause economic and social issues.
“A major concern beyond the constitutionality of the article and the human rights issue is how it can be implemented,” Jamal Fakhro, the first deputy chairman of the Shura Council, said. “There are serious worries that the article could be exploited by some people to create a parallel black market. There is also the concern that the ban could be widened to include other categories in the future,” he said on May 29 before the vote took place.
On June 25, King Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa referred the article to the Constitutional Court to assess whether it breached the constitution.
Foreigners make up slightly more than half of the total population of the kingdom. They are mostly from unskilled workers from Asian countries working in the construction and service sectors.
