Paris: Saqr Gobash, Minister of Labour, said on Monday that the government is considering various schemes to ensure that the expatriate workforce in the country is provided greater social security.
Gobash said his ministry's immediate focus, however, remains on guaranteeing end-of-service benefits and protecting workers against non-compliance of contractual obligations or default by employers.
In an intervention during an address at the second session of the G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting currently under way in Paris, Gobash said the UAE's current efforts to strengthen social security are not limited to shielding the national workforce from shocks associated with cyclical economic downturns.
Private sector focus
"They rather aim at aligning employment conditions across sectors so as to encourage employment in our private sector," he said.
Addressing a session on ‘Improving social protection for all: different situations but common human challenges', Gobash continued: "Earlier during our first session, I explained why the challenges the UAE faced with respect to promoting the employment of its nationals were not strictly a fallout of a down-cycle in economic growth; rather, they were rooted in longstanding barriers to the employment of our nationals in the private sector that could only be dealt with through short- and medium- term active labour market programmes and interventions on the one hand, and policies aimed at shifting job creation to targeted sectors in conjunction with reform of our civil service, on the other."
He explained that the government was focusing on two key policy reform areas in pursuit of its objective: "Our current pension regime is already robust enough by global standards, offering both generous retirement income levels and early retirement options. The challenge we face is that portability of benefits is currently hampered by certain access barriers to civil servants who consider shifting to employment in the private sector; we're looking into ways to minimise or eliminate these barriers," he said outlining the first priority.
Core reform area
Elaborating on the second area of reform, he said: "Public sector employment offers a significant advantage to employment in the private sector in the fact that it offers a significantly higher level of job security. Coupled with alignment-seeking public sector reform, the UAE Ministry of Labour is currently looking at creating an unemployment insurance scheme that offers an added measure of security and, hence, incentive to UAE nationals to seek and accept employment in the private sector."
Touching on the issue of expatriate workers, he added: "The notion of a raised social protection platform may be more relevant to the situation of expatriates working in the UAE."
