In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), currently, it has become very convenient for companies to cancel work permits in case an employee has put in his or her papers or has been retrenched. In a significant announcement through its social media handle, the country’s Ministry of Human Resource and Emiratisation (MOHRE) has come out with online services in respect of the same. The other interesting aspect is that not only employers even employees can make a request to cancel their work permits under certain circumstances. The process can be done via MOHRE’s website or the mobile app.
How Employers Can Avail This Facility?
In case you are an employer or the owner of a business, you are required to have an ’employer’ account with MOHRE to execute any decision pertaining to your organisation. For creating your company account, you should go to mohre.gov.ae and log in as an ‘employer’. Then, in the next few steps, you have to give some details regarding your organisation: for example, your trade licence number and particulars of your company card.
After visiting the MOHRE portal, follow these steps:
- 1. Choose ‘Electronic Work Permit Cancellation’ in the ‘Direct Services’ segment.
- 2. Following this, click on the ‘Apply for this service option.
- 3. After accessing the service, your establishment (company) details will be in front of you, displaying the employees’ strength in the entity apart from their other details.
- 4. Now, choose the employee whose work permit you want to rescind.
- 5. After this, key in the employee’s passport and residency particulars.
- 6. Then, select the reason for cancellation.
- 7. The employee, in question, is now supposed to give the ‘electronic signature’, which can be performed on the app straight away, and submit the request.
Now, What?
As per the MOHRE app, after the application gets the approval of MOHRE, the work permit gets suspended temporarily, and the information is despatched digitally to the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) of the Emirate. Then the employer is required to visit the GDRFA office or one of its service centres to cancel the employee’s visa in case the employee happened to be on the company’s sponsorship. After this, the work permit gets cancelled but only after MOHRE gets all the relevant info from GDRFA about the visa cancellation.
How Employee Can Utilise The Provision?
As said previously, not just employers even employees can cancel their visas under special cases. So, even a worker can seek cancellation of his or her work permit sans the employer’s approval if the corporate entity is not duly registered with the Ministry or if the Ministry is unable to reach the employer within five working days from the date of the filing of a labour grievance by an employee on the employer’s inability to suspend the work permit.
