The Shura Council yesterday approved the addition of an article in the new Private Sector Law that would have all warnings erased from files after six months.

If the offence involves either suspension from work or salary deduction, it will be cleared from records after a year.

The article, which was rejected by the council's services committee that was assigned to review it, was proposed by councillor and former Civil Service Bureau president Ahmed Al Bahr.

"Having disciplinary records is bad for employees as it robs them of the opportunity to be considered for promotion, even if they are productive," said Mr. Al Bahr.

"The punishment has been served already with the disciplinary action taken against the employee and having his records indicating that he was punished means double the punishment.

"When I used to be in the Civil Service Bureau, records of the punished government employee got removed after several months of the offence because it has an adverse effect on the employee as it encourages him to continue committing offences rather than being productive.

"If a promotion is involved, then employees would do their best to correct their mistakes by themselves, but if we threaten them with records then they would easily stop caring about their future in the place they work at."

Mr. Al Bahr said that having records would mean an end to an employee's career, because people don't look at improvement or productivity, they look at wrongdoings.

"The moment someone decides to look for a better job, the new place he wants to join would look at his discipline rather than credentials or experience and even though he has been punished for the mistake, they would punish him further by leaving him out of consideration," he said.

Council vice-chairman Jamal Fakhro said that the private sector didn't work as the government, because promotion was carried out under a different mechanism.

"The disciplinary record is not taken into account when promotion is considered and it is not every year as it is in the government," he said.

"The private sector is more flexible, as the employee could be promoted several times within year and could be left without promotion for years - it all depends on his efforts."