Firms with 70% Emirati staff exempt from penalties

Abdulrahman Saeed, Staff Reporter

Dr Abdulrahman Abdul Manan Al Awar, Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation, issued 3 decisions regarding the amendment of some provisions of the Decree No.279 of 2022 regarding mechanisms for following up Emiratisation targets in the private sector companies and the financial penalties imposed on the non-compliant establishments.

The new decision stipulates that this contribution is due at the beginning of the next year for the numbers of Emiratis required to be hired, provided that the total value of contributions is paid for the year for which the required Emiratisation target was not fulfilled annually.

A new clause No.5 has been added to the Article No.3 of the Decree No.279.

This clause stipulates that the establishments, which hire Emiratis by or more than 70 per cent of their total number of workers, will be exempted from payment of the financial contributions.

Recently, authorities have revealed that the total number of private companies joining the Nafis platform has increased to 7,017 companies currently working in various fields to offer multiple jobs for citizens through the platform’s website, compared to 6,022 companies in early December 2022, up by 995 companies within 30 days.

The companies joining the platform at the beginning of last July totaled 1,255 companies from the private sector, while the number of companies reached 504 companies at the beginning of last June, 1,947 companies at the beginning of last August and 3,931 companies at the beginning of October.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE) thanked private sector companies that achieved the required Emiratisation targets of 2022.

The Ministry said, “We look forward to strengthening our cooperation to achieve the 2023 targets, up to a 10% growth of Emiratisation in skilled jobs in 2026.”

The platform activated the feature of submitting notes and complaints through it due to the pressure witnessed by the call centre, stressing that the notes and complaints would be dealt with through the platform directly via its customer service team.

To submit a complaint through the platform, you have to log in to the personal account and click on the complaint submission icon, click on the complaint submission option to move to another page for submitting details and then input the complaint description and category with the option of uploading any supporting documents.

Subsequently, you have to click on the ‘Send’ option to transfer the complaint to the customer support team, which will contact the complainant to inform him of the complaint’s updates. The complaint will then be closed by the team but can be re-opened in the event that the complainant is not satisfied with the outcome.