29,000 Syrians issued work permits this year

AMMAN — The Labour Ministry has issued around 29,000 work permits for Syrians residing in the Kingdom since the beginning of the year, a ministry official said on Monday. 

Most of the Syrians who received permits work in the agricultural, services and transformative industries among other fields that are open to non-Jordanian workforce, the official noted, speaking on condition of
anonymity.

The Labour Ministry has a list of 19 occupations that non-Jordanians are excluded from, which includes administrative, accounting, engineering, educational and medical jobs, according to the ministry’s website.

“The government embarked on issuing work permits for Syrians more than a year ago,” the source told The Jordan Times, noting that the ministry in April announced a three-month period during which it exempted employers who hire Syrians from fees for issuing work permits. 

Employees do not incur any costs for the permits they obtain, he stressed. 

The ministry has extended the exemption period until the end of the year, the official noted, adding that “there are some 200,000 Syrians who established their own businesses across the Kingdom”.

Under an agreement the Kingdom signed in July with the EU to simplify the rules of origin for Jordanian exports to Europe, at least 15 per cent of the manpower in the exporting factories must be Syrian, and the percentage should rise to 25 per cent after three years.

Preliminary indicators of a recent study by the Economic and Social Council, dubbed “The effect of Syrian refugee influx on the Jordanian labour market”, showed that Syrian workers occupy more than 143,000 jobs in various economic sectors.

Syrians’ acceptance of working under inappropriate circumstances — in terms of working hours, daily wages or the work environment — and the money employers can save when hiring them are factors behind employers’ preference to Syrians, the study found.