Blacklisting of bogus agencies leads to fewer employment disputes
There is an inverse relationship between the number of runaway
housemaids and that of blacklisted recruitment agencies, at least in the
case of Sri Lankans in Abu Dhabi.
The more the number of unscrupulous recruitment agents blacklisted by
the authorities, the less the number of runaway housemaids taking refuge
in the embassy's shelter house, said a top diplomat.
The number of runaway housemaids in the shelter house of the Sri
Lankan Embassy in Abu Dhabi has gone down by at least 80 per cent in the
past three years, Sarath Wijesinghe, Sri Lankan Ambassador to the UAE,
told Gulf News in an interview.
He said this downward trend began when the embassy started taking
strict action against unscrupulous recruitment agencies. The number of
complaints related to other labour disputes also started going down, he
said.
"Now there are just five runaway housemaids in the shelter. About
three years ago there used to be 20 to 30 such women in the shelter
house. But the number has been going down in the past three years,"
Wijeinghe explained.
Unscrupulous recruitment agencies are mostly responsible for the
disputes between workers and employers, he said.
He was echoing a common fact widely reported by the UAE media that
the problems of workers in the UAE originate from the recruitment
process in their home country. Many recruitment agents charge higher
recruitment fees than legally permitted.
Many prospective employees in Asian countries take loans from money
sharks at exorbitant interest rates to pay that fee as they are lured by
the exaggerated salary figures in the labour contracts offered by the
agents.
It is the beginning of 'contract substitution' as the agents give a
different contract with less salary and different terms when they reach
the UAE. Most labour disputes originate from this contract substitution.
The Sri Lankan Ambassador said the embassy started holding agents
responsible for solving the labour disputes. He said his labour welfare
officer, Hemantha Kahawalage, received enormous support from the UAE
authorities in Abu Dhabi to take action against unscrupulous agents.
There are about 74 registered recruitment agencies in Abu Dhabi and
Al Ain recruiting labourers and housemaids from Sri Lanka and many of
them operate professionally without any cause for complaint, Kahawalage
said.
However, a few agencies cause most of the problems so 11 recruitment
agencies based in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain were blacklisted during the past
three years by the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment in Colombo on
recommendations made by the embassy, he said.
The blacklisting is temporary in nature and when they sort out the
complaints against them, this will be lifted on strict conditions, the
labour welfare officer said. He said only one agency was blacklisted
permanently.
Once blacklisted they cannot carry out any recruitment operations
from Sri Lanka, he said.
The action against a few of them alerted others to be careful in
their dealings which resulted in overall improvement in the recruitment
process, he said.
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