Sheikh Mo gets a grip

In a society where criticism is antithetical to local culture, Sheikh Mohammed's recent public censure of several government ministries is unprecedented. It also suggests - like the cancelling of the Jumeirah Beach development project - that public opinion and expert, expat advice is getting through.

The Ministry of Labour has rightly been condemned for its absurdly heavy-handed and misguided approach to Emiratisation, which included the total nationalisation of PROs, secretaries and human resource managers:

"It is very easy to impose Emiratisation. We can do this any time, but what would we gain if we did not provide our youth with the best knowledge, skill and expertise to commensurate with these jobs?" asked His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai.

Something the private sector has been pointing out for ages: what is the benefit to an economy if unfit personnel are hired solely because of their nationality? It means either incompetence and inexperience, or expensive "phantom jobs" - where a lower-paid expat does the real work behind the scenes, with the local taking the credit.

The Ministry of Justice also received a few thunderclaps from the sheikhly hammer:

"I have read the reports of the justice and safety ministerial team and did field trips to the courts and the ministry of justice. I was surprised and expressed my utmost dissatisfaction with what I read and saw. It was living 20 years behind [other ministries]," he said.

Improvements will include the translation of laws into English, a critical step for a country that seeks to operate on a level platform with a English-speaking global business world.

Education also came in for a battering, with standards still appalling low despite huge increases in funding:

"The current status of our education system is compiling huge losses to the UAE and its people."

The criticised ministers are taking the comments on the chin, not that they have much choice. And this is perhaps the deeper import of Sheikh Mohammed's comments. Finally ending the sacrosanct regional culture of "saving face" and the abnegation of personal responsibility that this nearly always entails.

The Vision® is back on track, and UAE society is growing up.

Ex-con excursions

A holiday in Dubai: seven star hotels, world class amusement parks, hyper luxury shopping, pristine golden beaches, year-round-sunshine, and now...

...rent-a-lag:

Dubai: Inmates who serve their sentences and successfully pass a tourist guide course will soon show tourists and sightseers around the city's landmarks, in a new initiative by Dubai Police.

The Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) will soon organise tourist training courses for 60 male and female inmates at the Dubai Central Jail.

What fantastic fun for all the family, trying to guess whether their tour-guide is a former burglar, crackhead, rapist or murderer!

Kudos to jail bosses for wanting to rehabilitate these guys, but try to find something a little less front-line for them to start out with.

Secretarial fiasco

There's only one way to describe the latest episode in the proposed emiratisation of secretaries, an embarrassing climbdown. After ruling that all expat secretaries - public and private sector - would be sacked and replaced with locals, and that expat secretaries would not be allowed get around this by changing job titles, we then learnt that probably only half of foreign secretaries would be replaced. Then we learnt that it wouldn't apply to small businesses. And now we learn that expat secretaries will be able to stay on under new job titles.

How did such an appalling mess come about? The usual stunning fusion of arrogance and ignorance. First someone figures out that: "most unemployed UAE nationals were secondary school graduates between the ages of 15 and 24". Next it's probably presumed that secretarial positions are low-skilled (because most of them are low-paid: "Indian lady on husband's/father's visa" being the usual job ad) so would therefore suit school leavers. Then it's presumed that all unemployed people actually want to work (in any country, there are plenty of dole bludgers far happier to sit on their arses if generous welfare is available). Finally it's presumed that unemployed UAE nationals actually want sectretarial positions.

Why would anyone with some degree of choice whether they work or not (given free health, free education, generous welfare) take on a job with long hours and a heavy workload for as little as Dh2,000 a month? There's a vast difference between a poor Indian lady strugging to pay her rent and medical bills and school fees, and a local person who is never going to be allowed to starve. Who can blame emiratis for wanting more lucrative and glamourous careers?

Then let's take a look at the upper end of the secretarial scale: the executive PAs and so on. These positions are much more highly paid: but they demand an equally higher skillset. The problem is that most emiratis with first rate English skills, excellent literacy, computing and organisational skills are already in huge demand in the public and private sector. There aren't loads of them floating around wanting to fetch and carry for some CEO.

So here's a clue to Tanmia and the Labour ministry. If you want to emiratise - and even us expats think it's a very commendable and necessary thing - then do it sensibly and gradually. If you must impose quotas, have a percentage system so young emiratis entering the workforce can learn the ropes from more experienced expats. Eventually emiratis will take over. And they will be competent, skilled and appreciated. But trying to instantly replace an army of 30 and 40-something highly experienced secretaries with a load of school leavers is just absurd.

A valuable lesson

Education minister Dr Hanif Hassan plans to upgrade the Islamic curriculum. According to Dr Hanif, the current curriculum contains contradictory ideas and does not encourage creativity:

"It depends only on studying by heart without critical understanding. It's also a curriculum that depends on preaching and emotional speech, and this kind of approach can't build a stable mentality that deals with the values of Islam logically."

Amen.

Education revolution

Hooray for Sheikh Mo, who is determined to modernise education:

"The days of dictating, memorising, reprimanding, and saying are long gone. A school's primary objective is to teach students how to learn, acquire knowledge, think, search, and have the ability to choose between the available and possible alternatives."

Wise and courageous words. Because what impact is a highly educated, independent-minded and critically-thinking new generation going to have here? Farewell autocracy, hello democracy. Uneducated aristocratic sons can forget about plum government jobs when lowly bedouins start postgraduating in droves.

Making short work

"They say the hours are very long, from 8am to 5pm."

A fascinating and illuminating report by one of GN's best reporters, Diaa Hadid, on the difficulties of getting locals into the private sector. It's not expat prejudice that's to blame, if the figures are to be believed, but local unwillingness to work a normal-length day:

"[The percentage of UAE nationals working in the private sector] stands at about one per cent - the number of UAE nationals employed in the private sector, in a country which creates 300,000 jobs every year, enough to absorb 10 times the estimated 33,000 unemployed UAE nationals."

Diaa also lists the number of (paid) holidays enjoyed by workers in the UAE public sector:

"Government sector employees work 7 hours a day, 5 hours a day in Ramadan. Most are given 45 days annual leave, reaching 60 days for top civil service grades.

"That does not include 9 days of official holidays, or the several extra paid leave they can apply for, including study leave, for employees who have completed 3 years work; paid leave to accompany sick direct relatives for treatment abroad; 21 days to complete the pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah; and 6 months sabbatical leave, although with strict conditions."

Excluding sick days, study leave days, accompanying-relatives-days and sabbatical, that's 60+9+21=90. That's THREE MONTHS paid annual holiday, and for the more cunning - juggling leave around weekends and chucking a few sickies - easily FOUR MONTHS.

Nice "work" if you can get it.

Winter Surprises

Government gatecrashing is becoming an absolute craze in the sandlands, with senior sheikhs and ministers paying unannounced visits all over the place.

Labour Minister Dr Al Kaabi pioneered the fad earlier this year with various impromptu visits to companies and labour camps, stumbling upon hives of corruption and indolence.

Education Minister Dr Hanif Hassan got a less than happy valentine when he popped into HQ on 14th February and discovered seventy per cent of his staff playing truant.

Social Affairs minister Dr Al Roumi stopped by Al Dhaid last month, and discovered aged technology and dilapidated facilities.

And now Sheikh Mo is also in on the act. First he paid a spontaneous visit to Umm Al Quwain (miraculously a few residents of the Sleeping Emirate were awake that day) where he was "shocked" to see chaos and disorganisation. No one else was, but never mind.

Next, Sheikh Mo dropped by RAK quite unannounced and ordered a shake up at the Labour Ministry and the courts.

So who's next? Government employees from mountains to sea must be quaking in their near-empty offices lest their department is the next surprise target.

Educate, then integrate

It's interesting - and worrying - that the UAE's minister for social development admits that the country's education system is utterly deficient just as the government plans to nationalise the entire human resources sector:

Dr Hassan concluded, "We all agree that the quality of education is not up to the highest expectations. What's going on for real isn't what we hope. We enjoy good services and infrastructure and in all aspects of life, except in education we are so far behind and we will have to work hard and make sure that education responds to whatever is needed."

Here's a clue to the Dishdashes-That-Be: try improving the education system first, then nationalising or quota-ising the workforce. Pushing poorly educated young people into jobs they are unfit for is heading for disaster and doing nothing to dispel negative stereotypes that are already well-entrenched.

"Human resources" is itself an odious term, that sprung up when employees became no longer considered as individual persons (=personnel) but just another resource, like photocopier paper or coal.

Baby you can ring my bell

Unless you're UAE Labour Minister Dr Al Kaabi. Ministry employees have clearly heeded earlier advice and now have a near-perfect success rate in not answering calls:

DUBAI — Believe it or not, calls made by the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Dr Ali bin Abdullah Al Kaabi, to his own office went unanswered, not once but several times yesterday, exposing the indifferent attitude of the telephone operators at the ministry.

In a worrying display of cunning, Dr Al Kaabi then rang up a Ministry employee on her mobile, and she answered immediately:

"An infuriated minister asked the staff as to why she did not attend to the landline call, to which she coolly claimed that the instrument did not ring at all, and that there was some technical problem."

Dear oh dear. Labour Ministry employees still have some way to go to safely achieve maximum inertia. Some further tips:

1. Don't answer your mobile during the working day (unless it's an urgent call from your dealer). Let it ring out, then call it back five minutes later and say you were in the bathroom.

2. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the day. If the person at the other end becomes irate/suspicious, claim you have irritable bowel syndrome and resign on full sick pay, suing for emotional damages and harassment.

3. Don't claim you have a "technical problem" unless you have actually properly created one. If your nail scissors won't cut through the phone chord, try pouring boiling qahwa into the receiver.

Follow this advice, and hopefully the Ministry will be back to 100% incompetency by the start of next week.

UAE education officially rubbish

Good old Sheikh Nahyan, one of the UAE's most strongly spoken and progressive ministers, tells it like it is:

"We know that our public schools are not performing to international standards. As a result, our children are not being prepared for higher education, for work or for the roles they will play in the future of their country.

"About a third of our budget for higher education is spent on teaching students the skills they should have already learned in secondary schools.

"This is a terrible waste of money and time."

Nahyan also admits international help is needed:

"We fully recognise that the quality of our education system requires global awareness and co-operation. As we seek to improve our education system at every level, we will continue to look for the assistance of foreign participants in the sector."

This time, let's hope they seek that foreign help further afield than Egypt, whose pro-rote-learning, anti-critical-thinking education system is currently in place here.

Workforce wisdom

Some wise words from Sheikh Mohammed about getting UAE nationals into the private sector. One problem has been that much of the private sector stereotypes most locals as lazy and work-shy, and only prepared to work a few hours a day. Government organisations haven't helped by continually refuting these claims - when clearly in any population there are lazy people, especially in a population used to generous welfare - making the private sector even more suspicious and intolerant of Emiratis in general.

Sheikh Mo takes the middle road, admitting the focus should only be on the keen and willing:

"We do not want lazy nationals who do not want to work, but we want those who are ready to learn, to work and achieve their best to be attractive to the private sector."

Another controversial issue has been quotas: forcing the private sector to employ a certain percentage of locals or face fines/licence loss. As with any quota, it's a disincentive for a local person to get properly trained if he or she can get a job by dint of ethnicity rather than talent - long term, it prevents the UAE workforce from "catching up" with the standards and skill levels of international workers.

Once again, Sheikh Mo wisely emphasises the need to train locals properly so private companies will be happy and willing to employ them:

"He said the programme will not force the private sector to employ nationals. On the contrary, nationals will be trained well and the private sector will look for nationals."

One more step that will be needed to properly reassure the private sector will be the right, codified in employment law, to sack any person - Emirati or expat - if they underperform. Currently, many private-sector, expat employers fear that once they hire a local they will be "stuck" with them if they turn out to be unsuitable, fearing wasta loss or expensive litigation.

When both sides are properly protected - with a fair charter of rights for both employers and employees, regardless of nationality - things will move forward.

RAK heavy heroes

RAK boys are doing the UAE proud - kickstarting emiratisation properly by training up for manual jobs. Twenty national men are being employed by a cement factory as loaders, technicians, and heavy equipment drivers:

The 20 or so employees who have departed from the norm have only the National Secondary School Certificate by way qualification. They had remained unemployed for a long time because they were not qualified enough to take on administrative or technical positions.

"But we succeeded in bringing about a change in their attitude towards employment, and we hope that they would in turn take the message to fellow nationals," said Ali bin Selman.

Pay is Dh2,000-2,500 for the training stage, rising to Dh4,500-5,500 on qualification. Modest by general Emirati expectations, it's still a sky-high wage for an expat manual worker. Government subsidies seem likely if this project is extended UAE-wide.

Hell's bells

Labour Ministry employees are in dire need of some better training. Ministry heads have had to send out a circular about ignoring incoming phonecalls:

This circular came after a bizarre phenomenon in the ministry's offices, which does not suit the leading role of the Ministry of Education. Some employees, it was revealed had gone to the extent of pushing their phones away from them so as to avoid answering calls from applicants. The brazen and deliberate ignoring of most incoming calls from anxious applicants soon turned into crisis proportions.

If you want to ignore your phone - don't just push it away - disconnect it! If the cord is welded in, a good pair of office scissors should do the trick. Otherwise adjacent Labour Ministry colleagues will be irritated by the constant ringing, and unable to concentrate properly on Minesweeper and FreeCell.

Bright pupils, bright future

The emiratisation debate will eventually become obsolete thanks to visionaries such as Sheikh Nahyan, the UAE education minister. Sheikh Nahyan is determined to overhaul UAE public schools and bring in a standards-based education system, preparing young people properly for the workplace:

Abu Dhabi/Dubai: A top UAE official yesterday called for education reforms in public schools that aim to create "a world-class, standards-based education system."

Addressing the opening of the two-day Eighth Convocation of Zayed University, Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Education, also stressed the need to focus on "productive employment-oriented programmes" in the educational institutions.

This is not the first time Sheikh Nayhan has made his views on the current status of the UAE education system very clearly known. Whatever reasons led to UAE public education being in its current quagmire, most educators are strongly in support of Nahyan's reform plans:

Dr Abdullah Al Karam, Chief Executive of Dubai Knowledge Village, said as the country and the region are going through significant changes, there was a need for "a major change" in public schools.

"We don't only need reforms but also a rebirth," he told Gulf News.

Jobs in Dubai

"Female Receptionist, with/without experience, excellent knowledge of spoken English, strictly on father's visa, required by an office on Shaikh Zayed Road, Dubai."

"Urgently required Female Executive Secretary, experienced, presentable & good-looking."

Typical job ads from local newspapers, where recruiters are happy to specify gender, age, appearance, ethnicity, religion and marital status. "Strictly on father's visa" is even worse than the usual "on husband or father's visa" - it means not only will they pay the prospective employee an absolute pittance, but they don't want her to have any other responsibilities or commitments such as children.

Discrimination is absolutely rife. Companies will pay for a token "white face" only when they need one ("UK/US/Australian passport holder required"). The rest of the time, a zero is knocked off the salary, and they hire from Asia.

A further look through the classified ads turns up phrases such as:

"Female Cleaner, young, preferably Filipino, required"
"should ideally be 30-32 years of age"
"Motorcycle Delivery Man, Sri Lankan/Filipino, required"
"Female Secretary cum Accountant, preferably Keralite"
"Office Assistant, female, Indian, graduate, computer literate, required"
"Indoor Sales Staff, preferably Lebanese/Egyptian"
"European Female Supervisor"

According to the UAE government, this type of advertising is actually illegal. Recruiters are not allowed to specify what nationality or what "religious sect" they want:

"It is a blatant violation of the labour laws to announce foreign nationalities for a certain vacancy. Newspaper ads should not specify nationalities for the required labour cadres, unless national employees were unavailable," the official told Khaleej Times.

Love's Labours Lost

Good old Dr Al Ka'abi, the UAE's most heroic minister, has hit several nails into very thick heads in his recent comments on emiratisation. The UAE's employment authority, Tanmia, has been strongly criticised for recruiting just 3,100 emiratis over the past four years, despite funding of Dh107 million:

"This means that the country has spent more than Dh34,000 to recruit every citizen, which is enormous," he said.

But wisely, the labour minister has no apparent plans to force quotas on the private sector:

"The private sector will not be able to provide jobs for UAE nationals if hasty and haphazard decisions are imposed on it.

Sadly for Dr Al Ka'abi, less than a fortnight after his greatly acclaimed order for labourers to be allowed to rest during the hottest midday hours, violation is rampant:

Abu Dhabi: Representatives of 15 local companies have been summoned by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs for flouting the midday break rule.

The ministry has said that it will issue fines against employers who break the rule and make their workers engage in outdoor work between 12.30pm and 4.30pm this month and next month.

Make drudgery divine

Credit to Salha Ghabesh from Sharjah Supreme Family Council for her comments on UAE nationals and the dignity of labour:

“They should not refuse to work in minor posts and should know that working in a genuine profession, even if they are minor jobs like watchmen, cleaners, plumbers and electricians which do not require education, is far better than staying at home waiting for a high salaried job."

Salha points out that "our Prophets and our forefathers worked as shepherds and they were strong enough to face the challenges of life without feeling inferior to others."

"The new generation feels ashamed getting into these professions because they feel these are jobs which don’t give them respect, and can be done by labourers from other countries,” she said.

Locals replacing subcons on building sites is still a long way off. But representation in a wider range of work classifications would be healthy both for the economy and for the populace.

Sheikhing up the school system

Hats - or rather keffiyahs - off to UAE education minister Sheikh Nahyan, who is systematically overturning every lunatic ruling made by his predecessor.

Earlier this month he re-appointed female teachers who were barred for being pregnant after a witless decision last year:

The Ministry of Education had last year issued a very controversial decision forbidding pregnant female teachers (candidates) from being appointed to teaching staff vacancies in spite of them having passed the relevant qualifying exams. And this despite the fact that the affected female teachers gave an undertaking that they would not take full maternity leave and that they would report for duty after just 45 days’ leave.

Now Sheikh Nahyan is dropping a tonne of ministerial bricks on the massively deficient local examination system. Educational sources revealed last year that they had been instructed never to fail any child a school year: regardless of whether the child was unintelligent, lazy, needed further tuition at a basic level, or just didn't show up for class. Nahyan shares their vexation:

"Exam papers are poor and do not evaluate students' achievement. The entire teaching and evaluation systems are appalling. They allow every student to pass whether he or she studied or not," Shaikh Nahyan said after a tour of a number of secondary school exam centres early this week.

Most importantly, he wants to abolish the current system of rote-memorisation, and introduce proper learning. University staff frequently lament the lack of constructive and independent thought among many local undergraduates: hopefully Sheikh Nayhan will change this for the better.

Live and learn

An exasperated lecturer at one of the Higher Colleges of Technology recently remarked to one of his male students that female students - who have a separate campus - were far brighter and more dedicated academically than their male counterparts.

"Of course," the young dishdash replied.

"Well why is that, Rashid?" the lecturer asked.

"Because girls spend all their time thinking about education and studies," he answered.

"So what do boys spend all their time thinking about then?" his teacher asked.

"We are thinking about them," Rashid told him.

Dance of the Seven Veils

Gulf News is running a little campaign against employers that won't hire women wearing hijabs, or fire them when they start to cover. Unfortunately it hasn't chosen examples likely to win a great deal of sympathy. 22-year-old student Tanzeela Saify was turned down when she applied to be a promo girl at an expo, for which the uniform - for East Asian electronics companies at least - is usually skin tight, metallic hotpants and enough cleavage to lose half the Saudi Royal family down.

"I asked if I could work there, but I was told no because the company does not allow girls with scarves."

She was told the promotional uniform included a short skirt.

Another Russian woman - employed as a dancer at a hotel - upon converting to Islam stopped dancing and started wearing a hijab, then couldn't understand why her sponsor was upset.

Western women converting face the same problem, with recruiters claiming that their multinational clients "usually want people with a "Western outlook"." They don't realise that this is a polite excuse for saying "pasty-faced women look bloody awful in a black headscarf." And of course it is western converts that tend to be the most zealous about tightly tucking away every wisp of hair, unlike the Gulf girls who wear the hijab more loosely and look immensely stylish.