The Chairman of Tamkeen’s board of directors also its Acting CEO, Shaikh Mohammed bin Isa Al Khalifa, was speaking to media during a monthly programme titled Coffee and said some programmes were scrapped and legal action had been initiated to bring Tamkeen’s money back.
The Chairman reaffirmed Tamkeen’s continuous monitoring of its provided programmes and submission of reports regarding any irregularities to preserve public funds.
Shaikh Mohammed said that eight violations were reported in 2014, relating to training programmes and the same were submitted the Irregularities Committee in Tamkeen, including job scale, professional certification and employment support.
He said the violations included wrong or inaccurate information presentation regarding the number of obtainers of certification, the ratio of attendance in training course, failure to implement the number of preset training hours, wrong information to the public through advertisements for which the service provider did not obtain Tamkeen’s prior written consent before its publication, the registration of nominees and agreeing on terms and conditions without serving any notification to them.
Regarding the actions taken against the violations, Shaikh Mohammed said amounts were either deducted or retrieved from the violating service provider in coordination with the governmental body to ensure non-provision of support to a specific establishment for the same purpose, suspension of salary support for violations concerning the employing companies, intensification and broadening of the scope of monitoring activities regarding the violating training service providers.
Shaikh Mohammed said Tamkeen programmes have become much easier than at any time past, as Tamkeen opened two new customer service branch offices in Bahrain Development Bank (BDB) in Seef district. Hence, the total number of Customer Service branches becomes nine all over the Kingdom’s governorates.
Shaikh Mohammed pointed out the existence of coordination with the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) to expedite the procedures for customers and provide them with optimum services.
Tamkeen can now directly access the new electronic billing system to check whether a certain customer has paid the outstanding charges or not.
Shaikh Mohammed bin Isa Al Khalifa said Tamkeen recently conducted a detailed study on evaluation of the performance of SMEs Support Programme.
The number of study specimen members was 237 establishments. The results were extremely encouraging. He said the majority of participants said the updated programme’s model and mechanism are far better than comparing with what was previously applicable.