Dubai’s bid to promote the welfare and rights of its labour sector got a boost this week with the launch of the Taqdeer (Appreciation) Award. The initiative offers an excellent chance for companies recruiting labourers to enhance their performance by focusing on the key areas of labour welfare — culture and work environment, security, recruitment and wages and labour perceptions. These seminal areas are now yoked to a points system and star ratings. The higher the points and star rating a company earns, the better its chances of being awarded government projects.
A win-win situation, this system allows concurrent fostering of labour health with an upward trajectory of company growth. Externally too, this system will enhance Dubai’s image in the international arena and with entities who focus on labour rights, apart from attracting the best labour workforce. Construction companies, in the first phase, and factories and free zones later on, will all be covered by Taqdeer to raise the level of fair practices in the area of labour rights protection — an objective the UAE has pursued with unrestrained vigour all along.
