His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan becomes President of the UAE, Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces and Ruler of Abu Dhabi. Image Credit: Gulf News Archive
Abu Dhabi: The UAE on Sunday set up a fund to finance Emiratisation programmes aiming at encouraging Emiratis to join the job market.
President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has ordered the establishment of the Khalifa Fund for Emiratisation Empowerment to support the policy of empowerment and boost economic and social development in the country.
The establishment of the fund comes in support of the empowerment policy initiated by Shaikh Khalifa to advance socio-economic development plans, provision of decent living means and stability to UAE citizens.
The new fund aims to provide financial resources necessary to support programmes and policies for encouraging UAE citizens to join the job market and make most of job opportunities available in both the public and private sectors.
The Cabinet reviewed the fund’s work mechanisms and areas of work at Sunday’s meeting, which was presided over by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
It also reviewed executive measures needed to start its operation as soon as possible under the supervision of the National Human Resources Development and Employment Authority (Tanmia).
The fund will offer a package of incentives to encourage citizens to join the job market, especially the private sector, and will enable Emiratis to make most of job opportunities offered by this sector.
The package of incentives the Fund will offer includes payment of financial privileges when a UAE citizen joins work at the private sector so as to reduce the pay gap between the public and private sectors, allocation of funds to employers to help them cover a certain percentage of the pay the national private sector employees will draw in the first year, funding part of training and rehabilitation costs of the new national employee when he joins the private sector for the first year and contribution to long and short term training programmes for national job seekers.
The fund will also use its financial resources to advance policies and programmes aimed at creating new job offers at the local and federal levels, supporting and financing small and medium scale enterprises, and financing university specialisations that cater for requirements of the local labour market.
It will act as a key contributing mechanism to leverage participation of citizens and develop the social welfare concept into a new one that enables able social assistance recipients to become a productive force contributing to the growth of the national economy.
It will also serve as a mechanism for facilitating success of Emiratisation policy and programmes and increasing the share of small size businesses owned by UAE citizens in a way the generates more job opportunities.
