UAE to take care of migrant workers

Starts with trilateral pilot project with RP, India

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) In a pioneering move, the United Arab Emirates, home to millions of migrant workers, including more than half a million Filipinos, is taking responsibility for them during their stay there.

UAE Labor Minister Saqr Ghobash, at a press conference Thursday, said his government recognizes the positive contributions of the millions of migrant workers in the hospitality, health, technology, oil and gas, and financial services sectors.

Ghobash said his government has initiated a pilot project to track 3,000 workers, half from India and half from the Philippines, during all four stages of the deployment process.

The project, he said, is essentially a research into the best practices employed in the four stages: pre-departure, residency and work in the UAE, preparation for return, and return to and reintegration in the home country.

"We will identify and document the best practices of the administration of the full employment cycle," he said.

Ghobash presented the two-year pilot project, which will be launched January next year, at the government meeting of the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development.

He said his proposal has received positive feedback from the European Union, which has recently issued a directive on the procedure for the return of foreigners to their home countries.

Salem Ali Almuhairi, general director of the executive bureau of the Council of Ministers of Labor and Social Affairs of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said other GCC countries may adopt some of the best practices monitored in the project.

Aside from the UAE, the GCC countries include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

Philippine Labor Secretary Marianito Roque and Indian Labor Minister Collerken Gurucharan welcomed the UAE initiative.

Roque noted that UAE is the second top destination of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. It is host to 304,241 documented Filipinos and 92 Filipino community organizations and associations.

"This project will contribute to the development of a multilateral framework for cooperation among Asian countries of origin and destination on best practices in the administration of the full temporary contractual employment cycle," he said.

Gurucharan said the project will showcase the three countries’ best practices in jointly managing labor mobility. He admitted that the Philippines serves as India's model in this regard.

Labor Undersecretary Rosalinda Baldoz, of the Philippine steering committee of the project, said the 1,500 OFWs who will be tracked, will be equally divided among the hospitality, health, and construction sectors.

She said other details of the project -- including the criteria for the workers to be chosen, how they will be hired, and provisions for abusive employers -- will be threshed out in the coming days.

The project, officially called "Pilot Project: Administration of Temporary Contractual Employment Cycle from India and the Philippines to the United Arab Emirates," will be in partnership with the International Labor Organization (ILO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Arab Labor Organization (ALO).

Michele Klein Solomon, director for Migration Policy, Research, and Communication of the IOM, said the output of the project may be used by other countries in their own migration policies.

"This is a good project as it gets the participation of employers, recruiters, and other stakeholders," she said. - Veronica Uy, INQUIRER.net, October 30, 2008