• Home

Illegal workers will not be issued health cards

The decision was taken at a meeting between both bodies. It was attended by Dr Abdel Ghaffar Abdel Ghafour, Assistant Under-Secretary for Curative Medicine at the UAE Ministry of Health, and Ahmed Khajoor, Assistant Under-Secretary for Manpower at the MLSA.

The meeting resulted in a decision to adopt a new mechanism by the MLSA for issuing work permits to doctors, allowing them to practise their profession in the UAE only on the basis of reports received from the Ministry of Health (MoH) on the rights, scientific background and efficiency of the doctors seeking work permits.

Both parties also discussed the project of replacing the signature on the labour contracts of foreign manpower with fingerprints to curb the cases of documents forgery, in addition to discussing the new electronic link between both ministries.

“We met the Ministry of Labour officials yesterday to work on unifying information between our two ministries and to coordinate on labour permit renewals and cancellations, to make sure the information at both ends is the same. With this system, which will be implemented in two to three months time, medical fitness certificates will no longer be issued to applicants in paper form but will be transferred to the labour authorities electronically,” Dr Abdel Ghafour told Khaleej Times after the meeting.

Mr Khajoor confirmed that the issuance of health card via the Internet would be possible by the end of this year when the electronic link will be established between 20 health centres and 11 labour offices across the country. He noted that the illegal workers who abscond their employers and work elsewhere in violation to the labour regulations would not be able to obtain health cards. “The MoH will make sure before processing the application of any worker for a health card that he has a clean bill from the MLSA, unlike the existing system.”

Both parties agreed to use a new application form for a health card via the Internet depending on the information and photographs available in the data bank of the MLSA. “The project will be carried out in two phases — first, the submission of the applications electronically and the second the electronic transfer of the medical fitness test results,” Mr Khajoor said.

Dr Abdel Ghafour observed that the initial cost for establishing the link between both ministries is Dh300,000, highlighting the advantages of the new system which will be highly secure and will prevent any person from substituting for another in the medical fitness certificate, besides ensuring that the results of the medical fitness tests don’t get mixed up. He said that the MoH is currently linked with the private hospitals and getting the information on the medical tests electronically.

• UAE