The UAE’s Ministry of Labour has said 27,962 establishments have resettled fines relating to 58,365 workers registered under their sponsorships during a six-month grace period that recently came to a close.
Under the amnesty announced in December last year, the Labour Ministry granted a six-month grace period to allow all individual fines, no matter how large, to be reduced to $272 (AED1,000).
From the start of January this year until June 30, the ministry collected just $10.2 million under the amnesty, which was just 2 percent of the $503 million owed in administrative fines on expired labour cards prior to the grace period.
Humaid bin Deemas Al Suwaidi, Assistant Under-Secretary of the Ministry’s Labour Affairs, said, “Enterprises that have benefited from the deadline amounted to about 70 percent of the total number of establishments in UAE, of which more than 61 percent of their workers have resettled labour card fines. We are proud of the success we’ve reached remarkably, the Cabinet’s decision helped stimulate the labour market and encouraged owners to rearrange personnel files and abide to the UAE’s labour laws.”
He added that the ministry can now spot facilities that haven’t settled their fines, which amounted to 12,038 facilities employing 36,635 workers.
“Inspectional visits will be carried out next week until the end of the current year to closely monitor their practices and take the necessary measures against them as per the directives of Saqr Ghobash Minister of Labour, who urged the need to report these facilities, especially since they’ve committed explicit violations against laws regulating UAE’s labour market,” he said.
Al Suwaidi said tougher measures will be taken against fake facilities. “They will be slapped a 50 thousand dirham ($13,000) fine per worker if the owner shuts down the facility without settling his employees’ rights and cancel their labour cards,” he said.
Al Suwaidi called upon blacklisted facilities, to speed up their fine resettlement process, by paying amounted fines or cancel labour cards belonging to workers residing abroad or report the workers missing according to common procedures. He said fines imposed on enterprises that did not respond to the grace period to settle labour cards that have been fined prior to 31st of December 2014, will now face a fine of $1,000 (AED4000), increasing monthly by $272 (AED1000).
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