The Labour Fund "Tamkeen" held a press conference to highlight the major achievements accomplished this year, focusing on its pillars aimed at employment support, career development support, and enterprise support.

On this occasion, Maha Abdulhameed Mofeez, Chief Executive of the Labour Fund "Tamkeen," stated that 2024 marked an unprecedented achievement for Tamkeen since its inception, which entailed the employment and career development of 41,000 Bahrainis in the private sector. This was achieved by channelling support programmes to accomplish key objectives, including creating quality job opportunities, establishing new employment pathways in partnership with the private sector, and training and qualifying national talent to enhance their career development prospects. These efforts align with Tamkeen’s commitment to sustainable economic growth in the Kingdom of Bahrain to implement national development plans, most notably the Government Action Plan 2023-2026 and the National Labour Market Plan 2023-2026 in collaboration with Team Bahrain.

Alya Alaali, Chief Strategy and Data Analytics Officer of the Labour Fund Tamkeen, introduced Tamkeen’s strategic priorities for 2025, focusing on increasing the competitiveness of local talent in the private sector, equipping Bahrainis with the necessary skills for career progression, and prioritising the growth, digitalisation, and sustainability of enterprises. This is in line with Tamkeen’s continued commitment to improving the labour market ecosystem and facilitating the private sector to increase the impact of its support programmes.

Meanwhile, Ali Hasan, Tamkeen’s Executive Director of Programmes and Partnerships Development, reaffirmed that since the launch of its programmes in November of last year, Tamkeen has successfully created employment and career development opportunities for 41,000 Bahrainis in private sector enterprises. This includes support for over 15,200 Bahrainis through programmes that facilitate their employment in the labour market, as well as supporting more than 25,700 Bahrainis through programmes aimed at skill enhancement and career development, and over 8,500 enterprises through programmes promoting growth and productivity.

In addition, an overview was presented of the key performance indicators achieved by Tamkeen during 2024, which showed that the percentage of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reached 51% of the total supported through the enterprise support programmes, as well as comprised 54% of the enterprises that received financing support. Furthermore, the percentage of women that benefited from the various employment support programmes was over 40%. As for professional certification support, there was a growth rate of 88% compared to the previous year, reflecting the development of skills and career opportunities. Additionally, the average increase in wages as part of the Wage Increment Programme reached BD80.

Internally, Tamkeen has prioritised improving its operations to achieve excellence by leveraging innovation and digital transformation. This includes providing a fully integrated digital customer experience, eliminating the need to visit service branches. Key initiatives also include implementing open banking services for automatic verification of IBANs, introducing electronic cheques for beneficiaries of enterprise support programmes, enhancing data integration with partners, and deploying other advanced solutions to streamline and simplify service delivery.

To ensure the efficiency of support and its allocation to eligible beneficiaries, Tamkeen has developed and implemented a comprehensive plan to strengthen shared responsibility in safeguarding public funds. This includes intensifying monitoring efforts, enhancing collaboration with relevant entities, launching a whistleblowing policy, granting Tamkeen employees the authority of Judicial Officers, conducting more than 6,000 inspection visits in 2024 to beneficiaries and enterprises, and diversifying whistleblowing channels. These channels include a dedicated reporting webpage on the website with full confidentiality, a hotline, an email address, and continuous communication with clients during and after the support period to detect potential violations, in which 54,400 beneficiaries were contacted during 2024.

In 2025, Tamkeen will intensify its monitoring efforts, which will include increasing the number of inspections to 15,000 visits for individuals benefiting from wage support programmes, in addition to 4,000 visits to enterprises benefiting from the various enterprise support programmes.