Dubai: Government services can greatly benefit from partnerships with theprivate sector, the UAE’s Labour Minister said on Monday.

Long queues of people seeking labour ministry services lining up in front of the ministry from the wee hours of the morning or even the night before were common earlier, based on the ministry’s experience, Saqr Gobash Saeed Gobash said.

But today, with the establishment of Tas’heel centres — set up in partnership with the private sector — such queues were a thing of the past, he said.

Gobash was speaking at the Dubai Government Summit.

There are a total of 28 Tas’heel centres in operation across the UAE, and nine new centres will soon open in Abu Dhabi, he said.

When the ministry was focusing on delivering services directly to the public, every department in the ministry spent a lot of time on the task. In contrast, only 15 employees from one department oversees the services delivered to the public today.

“This has allowed the ministry to focus on its primary tasks which are to monitor and regulate the labour market and come up with policy proposals to improve it based on research and studies,” he said.

Earlier, services to the public were delivered at the expense of the quality of services offered and often at the expense of the primary goals of the ministry itself, he added.

Tas’heel centres have helped simplify all labour-related processes,while increasing the efficiency of the services, Gobash noted.

A pilot project was run in 2006 with the setting up of a Tas’heel centre in Ajman, where the volume of transactions was lower as compared to other emirates. The two focus areas were to improve the standard of services offered and to streamline the various e-government services.

Following the success of the project, similar centres were set up across the UAE, Gobash said.

Recent surveys by the ministry show 78 per cent of customers were satisfied with the services of the centres. “The numbers are continuing to improve,” Gobash said, adding that the centres also promote Emiratisation. An average of 50 to 70 per cent of the employees at each centre are Emiratis, with 732 Emiratis employed at the centres last year.