Dubai labour court cases triple

The number of cases heard in Dubai’s labour courts this year has almost tripled from last year giving further evidence of the huge number of redundancies to happen the emirate.

Official figures show 2,658 cases were lodged with the court in the first six months of the year, up from 940 cases filed during the same period in 2008.

Lawyers told The National the massive rise in cases was due to companies making large numbers of their workforce redundant, mainly in the construction and real estate sectors.

Yousif al Hamadi, an advocate in the labour courts, said: “Some real estate companies take advantage of the market situation, where they conduct large staff redundancies and pay the severance pay but hold back on the commissions, which can be valued in the hundreds of thousands.”

Workers told the paper they had filed a case over non-payment of wages, with some claimants saying they had not received any money since January.

To date, the court has received almost 2,200 lower cases for claims of less than AED100,000 and 470 higher cases for larger amounts.

During the same period last year, there were 791 lower cases and 149 higher cases.

The Ministry of Labour revealed on Sunday that more than 300 companies had been reported for failing to pay wages last month.

Under the scheme My Salary workers can call a dedicated ministry hotline to report their employers if they are not being paid their wages.

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