Next UAE ‘Emiratisation’ deadline for private firms falls on 30 June
The deadline for UAE companies employing 50 or more workers to meet their half-yearly Emiratisation target is 30 June. In-scope firms are required to have expanded their Emirati workforce by 1% before this date, said the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE).
From 1 July, MoHRE will be verifying compliance. In-scope firms are required to increase the percentage of their Emirati workforce by 2% every year to reach at least 10% by 2026. This target is divided into two: 1% in the first six months of the year half of the year, and 1% in the second.
Firms that fail to meet the target by 30 June will have to pay a fine of up to AED48,000 (c. USD13,000) for every Emirati they have failed to hire. Calculated at AED8,000 per person per month, the penalties will accrue for every month a company is unable to fill up the required slots for UAE nationals. The monthly fine further increases by AED1,000 every year.
Early this year, MoHRE also started implementing the UAE Cabinet decision to expand the scope of Emiratisation to include firms with 20 to 49 employees. More than 12,000 companies operating across 14 specific economic sectors are now required to hire at least one Emirati in 2024 and another one in 2025.
MoHRE said that 1,379 private companies in the UAE had been penalised for violating Emiratisation rules between the introduction of the Emiratisation programme in mid-2022 and 16 May this year. They were found to have hired 2,170 UAE nationals illegally. The violators were fined AED20,000 to AED100,000 for each case.
The total number of Emirati employees in the private sector has grown at a rate of approximately 170% since September 2021, when the government launched the ‘Nafis’ programme, a federal initiative aimed at increasing the employability of Emiratis in the country’s private sector. More than 97,000 Emiratis have been employed in about 20,000 private companies.
“These workforce localisation initiatives across the GCC region are aimed at providing their citizens employment opportunities, ensuring the welfare of their nationals, and encouraging their citizens to engage with the economic landscape.” – Libbie Burtinshaw, Head of Operations at Sovereign PPG Corporate Services
