Failure to renew labour card won’t be tolerated

UAE authorities have sent a strong message to private sector establishments, saying their failure to renew workers’ labour cards would not be tolerated and warning that those with expired cards are considered illegal residents.

The ministry of labour said its records show that nearly 60,000 labour cards have expired and are still not renewed by their holders, accounting for around 1.5 per cent of the country’s total labour cards of about four million.

The ministry’s assistant undersecretary for labour affairs, Humaid bin Dimas, said requests by many employers to exempt them from fines for their failure to renew those cards have been rejected on the grounds new electronic renewal procedures take only around 10 minutes.

He noted that the new labour laws had increased fines to Dh12,000 per year from Dh5,000 to push employers to renew their workers’ cards.

“We are not after money but want to ensure a strong relationship between the employer and the employed and curb the phenomenon of illegal workers…we want also to change the behavior of some employers who sponsor illegal workers and those whose cards are expired,” he said.

“The ministry of labour will no longer tolerate the failure by some companies which neglect renewal of their workers’ labour cards because this will create an illegal and irrational relationship between the company and the worker and this will give rise to unemployed expatriates…this unemployed workers’ group does not benefit the UAE… on the contrary it creates an imbalance in the job market and causes economic and social damage to the country.”

Dimas said a recent ruling by the supreme federal court found that workers whose labour card has expired are unemployed. “This means his employing company has violated the visa law and the worker himself is an illegal resident.”