No more unscrupulous recruitment agencies to operate in the country is the message from the Ministry of Labour that is outlined in a new regulation, making them answerable to cases of workers’ exploitation.
The ministry yesterday announced the licensing of new recruitment agencies will be further restricted to help keep those unprofessional agents at bay and help protect the rights of workers who are brought from abroad.
According to Emirates News Agency (WAM), UAE Labour Minister Saqr Al Ghobash on Saturday issued a new ordinance with regard to licensing and regulation of private employment agencies in the country.
One of the key elements in the new regulation is that only UAE nationals can set up recruitment agencies and that every partner or signatory in an agency has to be a UAE citizen.
Another key element in the new ordinance is the elimination of child labour in the country, which had earlier prevailed due to money-making agencies. It bans employing any worker categorised under ‘children who are not allowed to work’.
The new regulation classifies the activities of recruitment agencies into two categories — either the activity of ‘mediation’ between the employer and the employed, or the ‘temporary employment activity’, recruiting workforce and supplying them to prospective employers.
The ordinance makes it mandatory that a bank security deposit of Dh1 million for the temporary employment agencies, and Dh300,000 for practising a meditation activity, must be paid.
The ordinance also ordered employment agencies not to collect fees or commission from workers since the resolution defined that the ministry asks the employment agencies to pass on an undertaking that it must pay back a worker what he/she has paid to anybody/entity inside or outside the country, which the agency dealt with.
Those agencies failing to abide by the new set of regulations and terms and conditions will be fined and their licences cancelled.
The new ordinance comes as part of the recent series of new labour laws to help streamline the manpower market of the country, protect expatriate workers’ rights and be at par with International Labour Organization (ILO) norms.
According to a source, this would help curb down cases such as those where many foreign agencies and expatriates who had run such companies had earlier got scot-free after cheating thousands of foreign workers.
With the UAE citizens being the only ones eligible to manage such agencies, it will help curb exploitations and makes them answerable to unscrupulous acts.
“The ordinance also sets mechanisms to ensure the rights of enterprises that rely in their operations on employment agencies, and guarantees the rights of workers during and after the recruitment process,” the ordinance stipulates.
It also includes the creation of mechanisms to reduce certain malpractices that may occur as a result of recruitment operations, and includes a set of guarantees and commitments from the agencies, including transparency during the entire process of employment.
While announcing the new regulation, Ghobash said: “The new ordinance rectifies certain negative practices that were taking place during the process of recruitment, and provides for enough transparency by giving the worker the opportunity to read his/her original employment contract which will be accredited in the UAE while he/she begins the employment.”
Earlier there were a number of cases where workers were promised attractive packages before their recruitment and upon arrival in the country, found themselves with another set of terms and conditions.
In many cases local agencies with their foreign partners forged contracts to attract workers — two contracts — one forged with attractive package sent to a prospective worker and the other the actual drawn by the employer.
“We seek, through cooperation with our partners in the labour market, to deepen the reliance on agencies and recruiters to fill jobs in firms,” the minister said.
(C) Khaleej Times
I fully agree with the concept of only allowing Emiratis to set up recruiting agencies. I would also suggest that the ministry should set up a law for companies to hire only Emirati candidates in their HR department. As we all know most of these recruiting firms/HR Departments have hired Indian Nationals who systematically bin CVs of high caliber Muslim candidates and this is the reason you see many Indian candidates getting the job offer. The second reason being, that in Dubai recruitment agencies are staffed with young Indian/Filipino/Eastern European girls in their early twenties with no proper education or experience in recruiting. They will be scanning your CV in 30 seconds trying to find the "AAA" word that matches the "AAA" word written by their client. If they can’t find it, you are out. For that reason, in UAE, if you have not heard from a recruiter on the same day you sent your CV, you have been discarded. There are many fake agencies running in Dubai including the likes of Staffinuae, Hirerightt and many more.
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