UAE. The UAE, the Philippines and India are planning a pilot project to improve the quality of life for migrant workers, the Minister of Labour, Saqr Ghobash, announced in Manila recently.

The project will try out practical measures to help temporary contractual workers, looking particularly at improving the recruitment and “pre-deployment” processes used before they reach the UAE, the state news agency, WAM, reported.

Providing “decent” living and working conditions will form the second part of the project, to be prepared with contributions from the Arab Labour Organisation, the International Labour Organisation and the International Organisation for Migration.

The pilot project will also try to find ways to facilitate the return of migrant workers to their home countries and their reintegration into their communities, Ghobash said.

Minister Ghobash was attending the Global Forum on Migration and Development in the Philippine capital, heading a delegation from the labour, foreign affairs and interior ministries and the National Media Council.

He said the pilot project would lead to the introduction of “new policy guidelines and enforceable measures that ensure the protection of wages, the provision of adequate work and living conditions, access to avenues of legal redress, and the upholding of fundamental human rights.”

Ghobash said he hoped the process would eventually lead to a “comprehensive regional framework” for co-operation between migrant workers’ countries of origin and their destinations. That was one of the main recommendations of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, a conference held in January between worker destination countries, including several Gulf countries, and countries of origin such as India, Nepal and the Philippines.

The Abu Dhabi Labour Declaration signed at the conference proclaimed a “new collaborative approach” to labour issues, including exploitation of workers.

During the four-day Manila forum, Minister Ghobash discussed the UAE’s efforts to reform its labour market, especially through creating regional and international partnerships.

“In the past, progress towards these objectives has been hampered by the fact that the countries of origin and destination often had separate agendas as well as different and not infrequently conflicting priorities for action,” Ghobash said.

“It is precisely for this reason that the UAE has attached such importance in recent years to improving dialogue with individual countries of origin and seeking the establishment of broader consultations at the multinational level,” he added.

There are an estimated 320,000 Filipinos and 1.4 million Indians working in the UAE.

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