By IANS
Abu Dhabi : The Labour Ministry of United Arab Emirates (UAE) is mulling an awareness campaign to begin next week to educate workers about their rights and obligations, WAM news agency reported Monday.
The ministry’s Inspection Department said that teams would inspect companies as usual. “However, in this programme labourers will be involved to increase their awareness regarding their work,” Mohsen Ali Saeed said.
In this respect, the ministry will appoint 35 new inspectors and train another 60, who will attend intensive courses for three weeks.
The ministry hopes to implement a new tougher inspection that will cover Abu Dhabi city, Al Ain and the western region.
“The inspection teams would look into matters such as payment of wages and salaries, overtime, end-of-service benefits and occupational health and safety measures and conditions at the work sites,” Saeed said.
They will also focus on regulations to ensure that companies are making them available to the workers in different languages.
Companies that sponsor more than 15 workers are required to provide these regulations, approved by the ministry, for their employees.
Small enterprises, which have less than 14 employees, don’t have to display these regulations, but in their case the inspectors will scrutinise the wage accounts.
“We will also inspect the calculation methods for the employees’ overtime,” added Saeed.
The new inspection system will also include visits to the workers’ living quarters in Abu Dhabi to make sure that the housing conditions are suitable and safe.