Dubai: The Ministry of Labour has called on companies and employers in violation of the law to seize the opportunity to rectify their status and settle all accumulated fines before the six-month grace period is over.
The ministry had announced a grace period of six months, divided into three phases of two months each, from January 4 to June 30 for employers and companies who failed to issue or renew labour cards for their employees to come forward and settle their fines.
Following the cabinet’s decision to reduce the fine amount, the fines were lowered to Dh1,000 per employee in order to help those who could not settle their accumulated fines and rectify their situation.
Announcing the results in a press conference yesterday and the great response in the first two months of the grace period (January and February), Humaid Bin Deemas Al Suwaidi, Assistant Undersecretary of Labour Affairs at the ministry, said that 10,000 companies benefited from this move, saving up to Dh250 million after setting around 20,000 violating labour cards.
“There were 95,000 fines issued for not renewing workers’ cards and 5,000 fines for not issuing employees labour cards,” he said. “Fines had reached a total amount of Dh2.85 billion and out of the 40,000 violating companies, 10,000 companies rectified the situation by settling around 20,000 violating labour cards.”
He said that they ended up paying only Dh20 million, when the total value of the actual fines was Dh270 million before the grace period.
He called upon all employers to take advantage of the second and third phase and speed up payment of fines in order to avoid a Dh500 fine per month’s delay stipulated by the Cabinet’s decision following the deadline of the first phase.
In response to an inquiry at the conference about the types of fines that had been paid, Al Suwaidi said that about 11,000 labour card fines had been paid and about 8,000 cancelled, while some companies had informed the ministry of about 1,000 workers had not reported for duty.
Al Suwaidi said the ministry is doing its best to encourage the remaining companies to settle their fines during this period.
“There are some companies and employers who like delaying their payments, and because we don’t want them to do that, we’ve had to take administrative action against some companies that did not take advantage of the grace period by refusing to issue further work permits, basically to push them towards fine settlement,” he said.
He also said that from April 1, the ministry will also stop granting work permits to other firms owned by the same businessman who did not settle fines of a defaulting company during the grace period even if the other firms were not in violation,” he said.
“The main purpose behind this is to push them to cooperate with us so that their fines stop accumulating. We now ask them to stop delaying, to be active and to solve the problem because there are no logical justification to delay such payments, especially after the Cabinet’s decision to reduce fines.”
He said many labour cards had accumulated fine amounting to more than Dh50,000, and now they are only asked to pay Dh1,000, something which confirms the government’s keenness to support business owners and help them resolve their situation.
