By Yasmine Khan, advocate at law/Founder of e-Mal
While the UAE continues to implement new regulations and policies that are aimed at protecting the rights of business owners and expatriate workers alike, the manpower business has always fallen victim to hefty fees and long chains of agents.
As Bangladesh honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed visits country in pursuit of re-establishing the bilateral relations in terms of labour, which has been severed since 2012, now would be good time to discuss the use of the latest technologies like Blockchain to make labour contracts transparent and boost the UAE economy with lower remittance fees.
Blockchain technology has the potential to streamline the process in which labourers migrate.
A group of third-party investors led by e-Mal, a UAE-based Blockchain company, have come forward to foot the cost of setting up migration centres in the region based on blockchain to help Bangladeshi workers come to the UAE after a six-year labour migration freeze.
Dubai Migration Centres are to be launched to aid workers regardless of their nationality and language. The first phase will see at least one centre launched in every emirate with a free call centre and shelter for migrants any time day or night.
The centres will help educate workers about labour laws, employments contracts, local laws and UAE culture. It will also provide a place where mediation can happen between employers and employees to resolve disputes amicably.
Bangladeshi workers will no longer worry about paying a significant portion of their salaries as recruitment fees, or fall victim to rouge recruitment agencies to work in the UAE.
The recruitment process starts at the worker’s country of origin, where his or her biometric data, passport information, skill set, medical report and certifications are logged into a mutual system to ensure that they are cleared to work abroad and where labour smart contracts are transparent between all parties.
The outsourcing offices will also obtain all necessary documentation and papers as per UAE regulations and store it in the system database to offer a database that can be mined for historical records and migrant behaviour patterns and work history. Documents will also include certifications, training courses, test results and tier scoring systems.
The system provides workers with assurance that they will not fall victim to extortion recruitment or human trafficking.
The UAE Ministry of Human Resources & Emiratisation is continuously updating its regulations and policies to protect rights of both the employer and worker, such as the Wages Protection System and the recently launched insurance scheme that provides workers with protection of up to Dhs20,000. This secures migrants and their rights.
Utilizing the e-Mal platform, the Blockchain-based employment process will start at the country of origin that will help complement the Ministry’s objectives, while ensuring only qualified, certified and medically fit workers come to the UAE.
This move will help achieve the UAE’s goal of becoming the happiest multinational country on earth.