Asian diplomats: no drop in the UAE workforce
Asian diplomats: no drop in the UAE workforce
By Wafa Issa, Staff Reporter
Published: April 29, 2009, 23:08
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/09/04/30/10309007.html
Dubai: The overall expatriate workforce in the UAE has not dropped drastically, according to Asian diplomats who backed their claims with statistics which indicate an increase for some nationalities in the first quarter of this year.
Virginia Calvez, a labour attaché at the Philippines consulate, said that Filipino community had not been affected dramatically by the financial crisis.
While 3,000 Filipino workers in Dubai and Northern Emirates have been made redundant due to the crisis, some 5,000 Filipinos entered the country in the first quarter of 2009, according to Philippines consulate's statistics.
Currently, there are 300,000 Filipino workers in the UAE with 215,000 working in Dubai and the northern emirates indicating that only about 1.4 percent of the Filipino workforce has returned home, according to Calvez.
"The latest statistics indicates a growth of Filipino workers in the UAE despite the financial crisis and the UAE remain the second favourite country in the Middle East for Filipinos," said Calvez. She added that this backed assertions by the labour minister that there was no overall fall in the number of the expatriate workers in the UAE.
Saqr Gobash Saeed Gobash, Minister of Labour, had earlier this week denied that the country was witnessing a mass departure of foreign workers and that the population was falling due to the financial crisis.
More than 662,000 labour cards were issued and 405,000 labour cards cancelled in the period between October 2008 and March 2009, according to labour ministry statistics.
