UAE plays leading role in labour mobility

Abu Dhabi: The UAE has played a pioneering role in the region on issues relating to labour mobility through its leadership of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, said William Lacy Swing, Director-General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Swing commended the UAE’s arrangement with India whereby Indian workers are shown labour terms before coming to the UAE.

“Total transparency … total sharing of information is absolutely essential to a good contractual labour arrangement. So I would commend the UAE for that arrangement with India. It sounds exactly the right way to go,” Swing told Gulf News on the phone from Geneva.

He was speaking on the eve of an international conference on Labour Mobility-Enabler for Sustainable Development, to be held in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Swing said there was a vital need for enhanced international cooperation to increase transparency within international recruitment systems so that employers and workers can make informed decisions on their recruitment and employment practices.

“IOM is currently working on the development of the International Recruitment Integrity System, which aims to increase transparency and international cooperation within the international recruitment systems,” Swing said.

The Abu Dhabi Dialogue, mainly meant to ensure the integrity of recruitment of foreign workers, engages seven countries of labour destinations, namely the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia in addition to Yemen; and eleven countries of origin: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Japan, Singapore and Korea participate as observers.

“The UAE and the International Organisation for Migration have established a strong working relationship through our cooperation on the Abu Dhabi Dialogue,” Swing said.

He added that with the IOM’s long and varied experience on migration and development issues and global network of offices, including a presence in Asian countries of origin and destination, it could play a significant role in supporting the UAE to concretise, pilot and implement recommendations that come out of the conference.

Nearly four million expatriates live and work in the country, according to Labour Ministry statistics.

The director-general of the IOM said he trusts the conference on Labour Mobility will improve awareness and knowledge on the subject of mobility and development in the region.

Triple-win scenario

On how to make labour mobility a win-win-situation for workers, labour sending and labour receiving countries, Swing said as a process that crosses international borders, with potentially thousands of kilometres between countries of origin and destination, but which also crosses cultures, training and professional regulatory systems, and business norms, the potential for misunderstandings, mismanagement, and unethical behaviour is enormous within an industry that has developed around labour mobility.

“A long term and principled approach is essential to build the type of relationships and systems needed to support a triple-win scenario,” he said.

Swing suggested that countries of origin and countries of destination can work together to ensure that migrants have access to accurate and authoritative information on key issues such as training for work abroad, the functioning of recruitment processes, the rights and responsibilities of migrants in the country of destination and preparation for their eventual return.

Countries of destination, he added, can convey regularly updated assessments of their specific labour market needs to countries of origin so that the latter may be in a position to develop appropriate labour migration training programmes.

“The two partners can then join efforts to make sure that the workers’ skills and qualifications can be assessed, certified and mutually recognised.”

Swing stressed the IOM also sees a great need for measures to protect the integrity of the recruitment process.

“Workers are frequently required to pay exorbitant fees, receiving false promises regarding their salaries or working conditions, and ultimately being misled into a situation that is not to their advantage and in which they can feel “trapped”.

Remittances

The Director-General of the IOM said much of the interest in migration and development is focused on the issue of remittances, and with good reason given the significant sums of money sent by migrants each year; estimated at more than $400 billion (Dh1,469 billion) last year.

Remittances from the UAE were estimated at $12.8 billion last year, while money transferred by expatriates from across the GCC was put at $82.9 billion.

“We know that most of these funds are used to support daily household expenses of remittance recipients. This is in itself a worthwhile outcome that contributes significantly to poverty reduction. It is largely a self-sustaining process. The major policy concern of governments is how to work with governments and other stakeholders to see how remittances can be applied most effectively to sustainable development initiatives,” Swing said.

This objective, he said, involves reducing transactional costs of remittances — including facilitating access to financial services at both the sending and receiving ends; improving financial literacy among workers and engaging expatriates in investment opportunities.

On other ways foreign workers support their home countries, Swing said beyond financial remittances, there are countless other ways in which expatriates can support development in their countries of origin, including through the transfer of skills and the establishment of new trade networks. The IOM has developed projects throughout the world that facilitate the temporary or permanent return of highly skilled expatriates; these projects have the effect of meeting immediate service needs, building the capacity of local officials, and establishing a longer term network of cooperation between expatriates and institutions in their countries of origin.

Effective strategies to reduce costs of labour mobility

Regarding effective strategies to reduce the high cost incurred by workers while relocating to new destinations from their home countries, Swing said two issues needed to be looked at — the high cost of the recruitment process as a whole and mitigating the upfront costs of recruitment.

“Recruitment costs are high [at times both for employers and workers] because of a lack of transparency and inefficiencies within the recruitment process. At present, the industry is dominated by thousands of small-scale operations including agents and sub-agents in both countries of origin and countries of destination and; with such a myriad of small-scale actors, at times working informally, it is near impossible to regulate the industry.”

Swing suggested through a more coordinated and effective approach to international recruitment involving larger and more professionalised outfits, the industry would become more transparent and achieve economies of scale that would significantly reduce the cost of the recruitment process to employers and workers.

He stressed that ensuring access to flexible and low-interest loans to cover these costs is essential to reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing the benefits of labour mobility to workers and their families. Developing such programmes should be a priority for governments of countries of origin and countries of destination.

Profile

William Lacy Swing has been Director-General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) since 2008. Prior to taking the lead of the IOM, Swing held senior posts in the UN, including that of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he led the largest UN peacekeeping operation in history; and as Special Representative and Chief of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara.

The IOM works to ensure that the estimated one billion international migrants and internally displaced persons — roughly one out of every seven people in the world — are treated with dignity and recognised for the contributions they make.

High-level dialogue

An international conference on the impact of labour mobility on sustainable development will be held in Abu Dhabi on May 14-15, said the organisers.

The conference is jointly organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Labour, the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research and the National Qualification Authority.

It is being convened in association with the GCC Council of Ministers of Labour, Sweden – current Chair of the Global Forum on Migration and Development, the international Organisation for Migration and the World Bank.

The conference will be addressed by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary- General on Migration and Development.

The UN General Assembly will be holding the second High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development (“HLD”) in October in New York, following the first HLD of 2006. It will focus on keeping the welfare of migrants at the centre of the debate.