Monday, July 17, 2006

Oh COME ON it's illegal! Fix it!

From 7Days:

One day after promising to return them, the management of Skycom, a call centre in Dubai Internet City, is continuing to illegally hold its employees’ passports. In a meeting between the staff and the management on Saturday, the company agreed to return all the passports it was holding but employees told 7DAYS yesterday that Skycom has failed to do so.
Rashad Akbar, global operations manager of Skycom, told 7DAYS yesterday that he would only return passports of workers who were leaving the company. “We will send them back and return their passports at the airport,” he said, refusing to comment on the rest of his employees.


I simply don't understand. Holding employees' passports is illegal under UAE law. Why is no action being taken against this company? And others who also routinely break the law?

What is the point of passing laws if you're not going to enforce them.

Here are the full stories from yesterday & today

3 comments:

nzm said...

I wonder who the real owners of Skycom are?

It seems pathetic that DIC management won't step in and act for these employees, but I guess that the money they receive for office leasing etc from Skycom is what they're after, although with the huge backlog of companies wanting to register with the DIC, I wouldn't think that filling their space would be hard.

So it's back to my original question!

black feline said...

well...as far as i know...the real culprit is the sponsor! Nothing new or alarming...the sponsor will advise the company to do such despicable act...

Anonymous said...

If action is to be taken against Skycom, then similar action needs to be taken against each and every one of the companies operating in UAE.

Holding employee passports is nothing new....even large banks and companies hold onto employees' passports.

As long as employees are "guest workers" in Gulf countries, their passports will be held by their "hosts".....and you know how hospitable the people in Gulf countries are, don't you?