UAE to Enforce Dh1 Million Fines for Companies Violating Workers’ Rights

The UAE government has implemented new tough measures to try and protect workers’ rights with monetary penalties of as much as one million Dh for organisations and employers who break labour laws. This is a drive under the larger campaign of enshrinement of fair treatment of all workers as provided under the law.

According to a new federal decree, that was recently released, the UAE will fine employers, for actions like; hiring children, hiring workers without permits and moving people to the country with the intention of giving them work only to exploit them. The decree also aims at firms involved in employment frauds such as production of fake employees for purposes of Emiratisation.

The penalties vary from Dh100,000 for the minimum to Dh1m for the maximum depending on the following offences; hiring workers without permits, bringing the workers in to the country without offering them employment, and closing the business while owing its employees money. Such report frauds, say, where companies provide false employee details including developing fake employees, shall also attract equivalent fines, and the penalty may be strengthened based on the number of phantom employees created.

Many new powers are vested upon the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE) under this new regulation. Individual companies can be prosecuted by the ministry at the ministry’s own volition, and any disputes over the decisions made by the ministry will go to court if the companies concerned challenge the ministry’s actions. Moreover, MoHRE can compound an offense in case the employer consents to pay fifty percent of the minimum fine and reimburse all the monetary benefits that he/she got due to fake employment.

All the same, this crackdown on labour law violations has come at a time when the government is preparing for a nationwide visa amnesty starting September 1. The amnesty will make it possible to settle residents’ legal status or leave the country within a two month non-penal period expiring residency visas. The purpose of this measure is to help people, who lost their jobs and, as a result, could not leave the country legally, as well as those, who were recruited under false promises.