Bilateral Talks with UAE in City Today
Dhaka wants unified job contract, minimum wage
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) should design unified job contracts for the Bangladeshi workers going to the UAE to check deception by the employers.
The issue will be raised to the UAE delegation arriving in Dhaka today to hold a bilateral meeting with Bangladesh at the state guest house, Padma.
The UAE labour ministry Undersecretary Mubarak Saeed Aldhaheri and Bangladesh's Expatriates' Welfare Secretary Dr Zafar Ahmed Khan will lead the respective countries at the meeting today.
"We want that all our people going to the UAE have unified job contracts. It is because many a times their employers modify the contracts to pay them lower amounts than agreed upon," Dr Zafar told The Daily Star yesterday.
Unified job contract refers to similar type of work contract approved by the UAE that cannot be changed without the government permission.
The UAE, which now employs around 15 lakh Bangladeshi workers, is the second highest employer of Bangladeshi migrants after Saudi Arabia, said the government sources.
According to The National, an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, thousands of Asian workers, mainly unskilled workers, are victims of job contract substitution in the Gulf country.
The foreign workers either got a reduced salary or other benefits such as medical insurance and housing were removed from their contracts, said the newspaper on August 29 last year quoting a labour attaché of a labour sending country in Abu Dhabi.
Most often, the workers sign the new contracts under threat of retaliatory termination, it added.
"We also want the UAE authorities to have a system by which we can check the validity of the unified contracts online. This will, to a great extent, better ensure the labour welfare," Dr Zafar said.
The other issue that will dominate the bilateral talks is the minimum wage.
Presently, the minimum wage for the Bangladeshi workers in the UAE is 700 dirhams (1 dirham equals Tk 19.97).
"We want to increase the ceiling to 900 dirhams, which is the minimum wage for the Indians now," he said.
Apart from this, Bangladesh will ask the UAE authorities to streamline their medical testing system.
Its observed that a good number of workers going to the UAE were sent back only a few days after arriving there just because they were not found medically fit in the tests conducted in the UAE.
Before going to the UAE, the workers go through medical tests in Bangladesh and it is not understandable then why they are to return home.
The total system of medical testing of the jobseekers to the UAE has to be discussed, he noted.
The UAE delegation will be in Dhaka mainly to listen to Bangladesh's concerns that it could present in the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, a process of the Gulf Cooperation Council on foreign workers.
The next meeting of Abu Dhabi Dialogue will be in Philippines soon. The UAE as the present chair of the process is holding bilateral talks with different labour-sending countries.
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