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Dispute over wages settled

DUBAI — A dispute over pending salary payments for three months was settled yesterday in favour of 150 labourers of Kuwait Controllers thanks to the intervention of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

Several complaints received regarding non-payment of salaries to workers prompted the Ministry's Labour Relations and Inspection Departments to initiate a coordinated action to investigate the cases instantly, said Sulaiman Abdullah, Director of the Labour Inspection Department.

A representative of the employer attended the meeting at the ministry and submitted documents for the payment of salaries to the labourers.

However, the ministry's Labour inspection department will continue its investigations regarding other complaints that the labourers have filed.

The complaint includes the issue of improper accommodation. In this case, the complaint was that six workers were packed in each room, without supply of drinking water.

The workers have also complained that the employer deducts from their salaries costs of their visas and fails to abide by the working hours and does not pay overtime for the extra working hours.

They also complained that the employer does not provide medical treatment and pay leave allowance.

In another collective complaint, sixty labourers of a Saudi company operating in Dubai have filed a complaint at the ministry on non-payment of four months' salaries.

The Ministry decided that the Labour Relations Department will transfer all recurring collective complaints and individual complaints or those been filed by more than one worker of the same company to the Labour Inspection Department to have them investigated and checked in order to reach quickest possible settlement, said Sulaiman.

"The ministry has noticed that the lack of such coordination in the past resulted in inefficient performance as some complaints were not appropriately checked and some times were ignored or got a delayed response," he said.

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