Pakistan and UAE MoU to ensure risk-free employment

Pakistani workers coming to work in the UAE will sign an “Employment Job Offer” before departure from their home country, according to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), reached between Pakistan and the UAE.

According to the agreement, an Employment Job Offer will be signed by both parties prior to the individual’s departure from Pakistan, to ensure a legal and risk-free working environment for the Pakistani workforce upon their arrival to the UAE.

It noted that the job offer will clearly stipulate the rights and obligations of both the employee and the employer.

The job offer will also provide a basis for the Employment Contract to be registered in the UAE, a statement by the Pakistan Embassy in Abu Dhabi explained.

Pakistan has signed the MoU with the UAE to “foster cooperation in the labour and human resources sector,” it added.

The MoU was signed by Tahir Hussain Andrabi, Acting Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, and Nasser Bin Thani Al Hamli, Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation, on the margins of the ongoing 108th session of the International Labour Conference in Geneva, in the presence of senior officials of both countries.

It aims to “institutionalise the collaborative administration of contractual employment of Pakistani workers in the UAE, through use of information technology, the exchange of information and continuing studies in the area of labour,” the Embassy noted.

Commenting on the signing, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Imran Khan on Overseas Pakistanis, Zulfikar Bukhari, thanked the UAE Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation for its support, via his Twitter account, where he expressed his hopes that the MoU will “ease [the] remittances process” and “evolve a mechanism for early resolution of disputes with employers/providing legal assistance.”

Under the MoU, Pakistan and the UAE Governments have decided to undertake joint collaborative programmes and activities, including pre-departure and post-arrival educational programmes in pursuit of the objective of improving the administration of the contract employment cycle.

The sixth Article of the MoU deals with dispute resolution between the employee and employer.

As per the MoU, in case no amicable settlement is reached within six weeks of the complaint filed by the complainant, the complaint will be referred to the judicial authorities.

The two governments have also agreed to establish a Joint Committee to implement this MoU.

WAM