Reuters/Abu Dhabi
The UAE is considering changes to its labour law to attract more citizens into the private sector, local media reported yesterday, to lessen the burden of a bloated public sector in case of a fall in oil prices. Many Emiratis prefer to work in the public sector, where working hours are shorter, holidays longer and pay tends to be higher, while foreign workers, who account for the majority of the state’s population, fill most private sector positions.
To prepare for any future downturn in oil prices, leaders in the UAE and other Gulf states are taking steps to rebalance their employment structures.
Labour Minister Saqr Ghobash will present the government with a review of the current labour law “shortly”, the local al-Khaleej newspaper reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources.
The review would include proposals to bring private and public sector salaries into line, as well as increasing private sector holidays, it said. “The aim is to reach a compromise that will do justice to Emirati employees and at the same time will satisfy businessmen and company owners, so that Emiratisation be a real addition, rather than seen as a burden or that it becomes too costly,” al-Khaleej reported.
Just over 11% of the UAE’s estimated 8.3mn people are citizens, and most of the rest are foreign workers. The jobless rate among Emiratis is put officially at 14%. At a forum earlier this week, the UAE’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, told hundreds of officials that finding jobs for its citizens was one of the government’s top priorities.
His deputy Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan said the Ministry of Labour had been tasked with adjusting working hours and days of the private sector to make them more appealing to Emiratis.
Bomb found on Bahrain-Saudi Arabia causeway
Bahrain police found a bomb planted on a busy causeway linking the island to Saudi Arabia, and four officers were shot and wounded in a village, officials said in the latest violence to hit the kingdom on the second anniversary of its uprising.
The 2kg bomb, discovered on Thursday near a mosque on the Bahraini end of the route used by thousands of people a day, was safely defused, said the Information Authority in Bahrain. Late on Friday, four officers were hit by birdshot pellets in the village of Karzakan, the authority added, quoting the island’s chief of public security Major-General Tariq Hassan al-Hassan.
The announcements came as thousands were expected to take to the streets of the capital yesterday for the funeral of a teenager the opposition said was killed in clashes between police and activists earlier this week. The violence has cast a shadow over talks launched last week between the opposition groups and the government to end the political deadlock in the country. — Reuters
