A five-day visit to the Emirates was recently completed by an International Labour Organization (ILO) expert team. The visit aimed at evaluating the Wage Protection System and look into its suitability as an international model.

The system has the main motive to make sure that the workers are paid without any delays. The system also enables the Ministry of Labor to check if any company is defaulting on salaries or making illegal deductions and that too automatically. It is being predicted that ILO report will meet the system's efficiency and examine its inspection protocols.

The ILO representative, Karel van Damme, who specialises in salary disputes said, "ILO interest in the wage protection system is fully justified. Issues facing cross-border workers across the world are very much the same, even if in the UAE cross-border employment is higher than other countries."

He specified that the ways to put system in best use somewhere else will be considered by the organization.

The Ministry of Labour statistics feels that nearly 4.1 million workers in 269,100 companies in the Emirates would enroll in the system by next month. Till now, the system has signed over 1.8 million workers.

Within two weeks, the report will be submitted to the ILO's headquarters in Geneva by Mr Van Damme. Following this, the report will be sent to the ministry, which has the choice to release it. As per Saqr Ghobash, the Minister of Labour, his agency would be open to any recommended changes.

The ministry's wage protection offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the Central Bank, commercial banks and exchange houses were visited by the ILO officials, who also had a word with several workers.