Engineers Against Poverty (EAP) have released the third paper in a series focusing on protecting the addressing the issue of late, partial or non-payment of wages of migrant construction workers in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

Low-wage migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by contractors and subcontractors unable or unwilling to pay wages in full and on time. Designed to reduce labour disputes and protect workers, Wage Protection Systems (WPS) were introduced across all GCC countries to pay migrant workers electronically and track salary payments. Despite the WPS, delayed wages remain one of the most frequent labour abuses faced by migrant workers - "it has so far failed to reduce them or to serve as a deterrent to late or non-payment of wages".

EAP's paper considers wage protection systems and legislation in four other countries or regions (China, EU, US and Latin America) to identify measures that could be adopted in the GCC countries. Common threads identified by EAP included the importance of extending liability for delayed wages across the supply chain to hold main contractors and project owners legally responsible for ensuring workers on projects received their due wages on time, introducing mandatory licensing and registering for labour suppliers, and imposing sanctions on non-compliant employers.