Certificate of closure must for sponsorship transfer - ministry

No employee of a firm which has been closed down will be allowed to transfer his sponsorship unless an attested certificate of closure issued by a competent court is submitted to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

Ahmed Darwish Al Housni, Head of the Labour Relations Department, Abu Dhabi, explained that any application for sponsorship transfer submitted by an employee of a closed firm will not be entertained by the ministry if it is not accompanied by the certificate.

The employee is eligible for sponsorship transfer under the Cabinet decision No. 30 for 2001.

He said the court certificate is required to ensure that the company is closed down, liquidated, and is no longer operating so that its employees are allowed to transfer their sponsorship without the employer being notified.

Al Housni indicated that some employees produce letters from the licensing bodies confirming that licences of the companies they were working for expired and have not been renewed for a long time. He said these certificates issued by municipalities and other licensing bodies are not concrete proof of the company's closure.

"Of course, the licence may have expired and is not renewed, but the company still exists," he said. He added that there is a difference between expiry of a company's licence and the closure and liquidation of a company.

The ministry is planning to sort out active and non-active companies in a bid to control the labour market. The ministry has recently discovered that 170,000 out of 350,000 firms licensed by municipalities and economic departments are working actively in the labour market. In Dubai, for example, there are 52,000 active firms out of 100,000 registered firms.

The ministry's sources explai-ned that a plan to set up a database on the labour market is underway.

The source said this move is important to reorganise the status of non-active companies, where they will be given an opportunity to contribute actively to the development of the country, otherwise they have to give way for others.