Labour Minister Saqr Ghobash has issued an ordinance on the licensing and regulation of private employment agencies.
The ordinance classified the activity of employment 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 limited the right of setting up a private employment agency for UAE citizens and also stipulated that every partner and signatory in an employment agency should be citizens to be eligible for applying for a licence.
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 contained creation of mechanisms to reduce certain malpractices that may occur as a result of recruitment operations, and stipulated a set of guarantees and commitments from the Agencies including transparency during the entire process of employment beginning from the phase of recruiting from the worker’s country of origin until the operations of the firm in which he will work.
Issuing the ordinance the Labour Minister said that the new ordinance rectifies certain negative practices that were taking place during the process of recruitment, and provides for enough transparency through giving the worker the opportunity to read his original employment contract which will be accredited in the UAE while he begins the employment.
The minister emphasised that the new ordinance also regulates the entire process of contractual work beginning from the labour supplying country until the labour receiving country.
“We seek, through cooperation with our partners in the labour market to deepen the reliance on agencies and recruiters to fill the jobs in firms”, the minister said.
