ABU DHABI // Unscrupulous employers are illegally charging staff up to Dh15,000 every two years for the renewal of their employment visas.
The practice is common among small-business owners and most of the victims are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, working in the tailoring industry and in grocery shops. They remain silent out of fear for their jobs.
Visas for manual workers in Abu Dhabi must be renewed every two years at a cost of Dh2,879. By law, the employer must pay. Instead some pass the cost – and more – on to staff.
“The exploitation starts from Dh5,000 reaching up to Dh15,000 in some cases,” said Mohammed Shahadat Husain, a counsellor at the Bangladesh embassy in Abu Dhabi.
“Sponsors take this money. They literally threaten to cancel the visa if the visa charges are not paid,” Mr Husain said.
“I have cases in my own hand. One Bangladeshi came to me this morning and told me his sponsor was demanding Dh10,000 for renewal.”
Sultan Al Sammahi, a member of the FNC’s labour, health and social affairs committee, said charging employees for visa renewal was a “vile” practice that needed to end.
“This is very wrong,” he said, “companies taking advantage of workers and their need to work in the UAE.”
He said on some occasions workers were promised far higher pay in their home country only to come to the UAE after having paid thousands for their visa to be on a far lower wage.
“Some come in debt,” Mr Al Sammahi said. “They sell their home, land and other belongings back home to come here. And they don’t get the job they were promised once they reach here. And it’s usually people of their own nationality who trick them and make them pay for their visa and take advantage of their vulnerability.”
He urged workers to go to the Ministry of Labour if they felt their employer was taking advantage of them. “They protect workers’ rights,” he said.
A Bangladeshi tailor in Abu Dhabi who has lived in the country for 25 years said this was the first year he had not paid visa renewal charges. He has paid about Dh3,000 each time.
“We can’t argue or complain about this otherwise the boss would cancel our visa and get others from India or Pakistan who are ready to buy the visa,” he said.
Another Pakistani worker paid the fees directly to his employer. “They take visa charges to ensure that workers don’t flee,” he said. “Otherwise they can leave the job after six months and find another one. If you roam around the market, you can find all workers would have paid for their visas and now pay for renewals. Some pay in half, while some pay in full. It depends on the business.”
An Indian expatriate said: “I paid Dh1,500 for renewal of my visa and the rest was paid by my [business] owner. Every month he deducts Dh200 from the salary.”
The man earns Dh1,500 a month but said he was pleased to receive more money at Ramadan and Eid.
A Bangladeshi construction worker said his company paid his renewal fees, but he had paid 250,000 taka, about Dh12,000, for his initial employment visa.
A Nepalese expatriate who works in a grocery shop in Mussaffah said: “I paid 180,000 Nepalese rupees, about Dh6,500, for my visa three years back and now I pay for my renewals.”
He said the shop owner required him to repay half the renewal expenses.
Dhananjay Jha, the Nepalese ambassador, said: “The embassy has received such cases where Nepalese have complained of being forced to pay visa renewal charges. Every four to six months we get a few such cases.”
When the mission inquired, the employers denied taking money from employees. It becomes a matter of the worker’s word against the employer, Mr Jha said.
“But it’s obvious everybody buys new entry visas back home to come here, while some, we can say, are asked to make renewal payments.”
The Pakistan consulate in Dubai also deals with visa and illegal payment disputes every month.
Haroon Malik, labour attache at the consulate, said complaints were often a result of individuals making illegitimate agreements with employers, such as working on a profit-sharing basis and earning more than staff on a fixed salary. “Lack of trust and shrinking business lead to visa fee disputes,” Mr Malik said. Then employees resort to the mission and labour courts for help.
“When an employee wants to return home and change jobs, he can’t do it, as business owners won’t release passports,” he said.
In case of severe disputes, business owners complain to the Ministry of Labour about absconding employees, and the embassy only discovers it later on.
A Pakistani shop owner in Abu Dhabi said deducting money for visa renewal was reasonable, because he paid his staff well. He said he and his employees agreed on a salary of Dh700 a month officially, but they actually earn at least Dh3,000 a month by working on commission.
“I spend more than Dh10,000 on bringing a worker, then they work and repay,” he said.
He admitted that visa fees should be paid by the employer, but said: “I don’t exploit them. I paid their security deposit of Dh3,000 each, but I didn’t ask them to repay it.”
The Ministry of Labour and the immigration department at the Ministry of Interior were asked to comment two weeks ago. Neither has responded.
anwar@thenational.ae
* Additional reporting by Ola Salem
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cylinder turbo hybrid
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 390bhp
Torque: 400Nm
Price: Dh340,000 ($92,579
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
Volvo ES90 Specs
Engine: Electric single motor (96kW), twin motor (106kW) and twin motor performance (106kW)
Power: 333hp, 449hp, 680hp
Torque: 480Nm, 670Nm, 870Nm
On sale: Later in 2025 or early 2026, depending on region
Price: Exact regional pricing TBA
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
The biog
Simon Nadim has completed 7,000 dives.
The hardest dive in the UAE is the German U-boat 110m down off the Fujairah coast.
As a child, he loved the documentaries of Jacques Cousteau
He also led a team that discovered the long-lost portion of the Ines oil tanker.
If you are interested in diving, he runs the XR Hub Dive Centre in Fujairah
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Zayed Sustainability Prize
THE BIO
Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979
Education: UAE University, Al Ain
Family: Married with two daughters: Asayel, 7, and Sara, 6
Favourite piece of music: Horse Dance by Naseer Shamma
Favourite book: Science and geology
Favourite place to travel to: Washington DC
Best advice you’ve ever been given: If you have a dream, you have to believe it, then you will see it.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)
On sale: Now
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The specs: 2018 Renault Megane
Price, base / as tested Dh52,900 / Dh59,200
Engine 1.6L in-line four-cylinder
Transmission Continuously variable transmission
Power 115hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque 156Nm @ 4,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined 6.6L / 100km
