No room for handicapped in the local labour market
(CATCH OF THE DAY) - Khaleej Times

18 September 2006


THERE will be no room for the handicapped in the UAE labour market when the introduction of the e-system for entry and recruitment of foreign workforce becomes effective. The new system, as the Minister of Labour Dr Ali Abdullah Al Kaabi explained, all labour contracts and transactions would be processed by labour ministries or offices in the supplying countries.

The new system will stamp out the visa racketeers and illegal recruitment agents, whose unlawful business will face a serious threat, and will certainly crumble and vanish for ever to the relief of the local business and the country. The new hired workers, through the new system, will take up the job after undergoing a tedious scrutiny, tests and interview as competent employees in terms of work, and they will be medically fit too. The move aims at creating a perfect labour market to curb the past shortcoming and irregularities.

The violations some have made are incalculable with adverse results such as the man who was caught selling drugs, but later, when prosecuted, walked free for he was schizophrenic as proved by medical reports in his country and in Dubai.

The man with multiple personality had been living and working in the country for years without being detected by his employer regarding his serious case. The man, a reminiscence of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, might go berserk, causing harm to others. And when caught, no one can prove which part of his split personality had committed the crime. The Big Question is who brought such an impaired man to the country and got him a job?