Nationals not ready yet to replace expat labour, says expert
By Anwar Elshamy
ABU DHABI: The plans of Gulf states to replace expatriate labour with their national manpower are doomed to failure unless these countries introduce serious changes in their concept of development, an official at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said yesterday.
Speaking at the ‘Gulf between Conservatism and Change’ conference in Abu Dhabi, Khawla Matar, a specialist in labour affairs with the ILO, said the Gulf states that depend on expatriate workforce would not be able to do without it as long as they applied the current concept of development.
“Expatriate labourers constitute about 80% of the workforce in some Gulf states,” she said.
“They are mainly employed in the construction, services and domestic work sectors which are not desired options for the citizens of these countries. “It would be very difficult for the Gulf states to dispense with expatriate workers since the type of development they seek requires this cheap labour.”
“I believe that national manpower in Gulf states are not capable of occupying the place of the expatriate labour in terms of the low wages the later receive.
“These states have to review their concept of development which relies on the expatriate labourers.”
Matar said that Gulf states were facing a critical situation in terms of addressing both the burgeoning unemployment among their own citizens as well as alleged violations of expatriates’ rights.
“Gulf states fail in employing all their citizens because of the increasing number of the university graduates annually entering the labour market without having the required skills. For that reason, the private sector is being pressured by governments to employ them,” she said.
The official called for the abolition of the sponsorship system applied in the Gulf states, saying that violations of the rights of the expatriates have tarnished the global image of these states.
“The repute of the Gulf states is in peril. They have to cancel the sponsorship and allow labour unions through which expatriate labour can raise its problems.
“The recent workers’ strikes in Dubai were by Indian expatriates hailing from Kerala which is known for its strong unions,” she said, observing that international reports highlighting the woes of the expatriates in Gulf states are on the rise.
Earlier, in her opening address to the conference, Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, who is the head of the UAE Women’s Association, urged for a comprehensive review of the social and political situations in the Gulf countries.
“It is very important for us to review the laws and philosophies organizing many of our political and social situations,” she said during a keynote address in the conference being held at the Emirates Centre for Strategic studies and Research.
source::Gulf-Times
Unions are good, but most of the times they stabbed the workers as a double edge knife carried out by a hit man, looking for the big fish of the union. In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.- Mark Twain
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Everybody is right Everybody is wrong, it depend where we stand.
Can somebody explain the origins and purpose of the No Objection Certificate system to me? It seems like a drag on the economy now, but it must have had a good reason for implementation initially, but I can't imagine what it was.
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even to the hand that crushes it.