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Grace period for rectifying workers’ status ends today

So today is the last chance for companies to apply for rectification of the status of workers, warned a ministry source. With the expiry of the grace period, the ministry will implement the hefty penalty imposed on companies that failed to issue or to renew their labour card which is Dh5,000 for each year or part of the year’s delay, he stressed.

Also, the ministry will continue blacklisting and not dealing with companies that failed to rectify the status of workers which came under 21 classifications in the ministry’s directory, he noted. Significant numbers of companies have corrected the status of their workers, whereas many others failed to do that, he said.

During the grace period which began on January 2, the ministry listed the companies that have irregularities and stopped accepting transactions from them, apart from those related to rectification of workers’ status. The ministry, checking the computer files of companies, found out that there are about 250,000 employees whose status was not clear. Some names of workers were repeated in the computer files of companies, while others had not been issued labour cards after being issued work permits for bringing them into the country.

Others had not renewed their labour card for several years. This may include cases of workers such as those who left the country during the amnesty given by the government in 1996 and 2003, those who died and whose names were not deleted by their employers, those who left the country on vacation but failed to return, those who transferred their sponsorship to other employers but whose names were not deleted by the first employer, or those staying illegally while their labour cards and visas had expired.

The ministry, after the grace period, will stop dealing with companies that have such cases until their records are cleared, stressed the source.

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