Legal Corner : Transfer of sponsorship after dispute Thursday, 16 June 2011 04:46

 By Abdelaal A Khalil

Some workers approach the courts and request the transfer of sponsorship because of feeling cheated by their companies by giving a fixed salary for a long time despite the price hikes and soaring living costs. These workers are always threatened either to accept their current condition and salary or leave the country.

The main reason for complaint is the lack of objective criteria for appointment in the private sector. This leads to a sense of lack of rules of justice. An employer may appoint new staff with higher salaries and then ask the old staff to train them due to lack of experience. This causes employees to look for new jobs with other companies.

This is confirmed by the fact that the sponsorship transfer by a resolution from the Minister of Interior is temporarily until the legal dispute is resolved. The transfer becomes final if the employers were proven abusive.

The exception set out by Law No. 4 / 2009 on the entry and exit of expatriates gives the Minister for Interior or his designee, the authority to transfer the sponsorship in case there is a legal dispute between the worker and his sponsor.

This exception aims at mitigating the hardships of sponsorship system, which is under criticism from human rights activists. It is also a message to employers to make them implement the terms of the contracts with the workers to the fullest and warn them against the failure to do so.

It also make business owners bear in mind that serving the employer must be due to the desire and consent of both parties with the aim of achieving their common interests.

The law also aims to open a legitimate and legal window for workers to express their complaints against employers and encourages them to ask the employer to carry out the contractual obligations.

The legislation considered the interest of both parties through allocating a separate department to receive labour complaints and established sub-offices which are working hard to resolve differences that arise between both parties. The government also left the door open for those who wish to resort to courts as a constitutional right.

Finally, the law achieved balance in the relation between both parties while considering the interest of the state in the relationship between the parties.

In order for a contract to be right, the employee should have a six-month probation period. Both parties can terminate the contract without giving reasons within the six months.

After this period ends, the two parties are supposed to sign the contract with a certain duration. However, what happens really is that the employer issues contracts with indefinite durations and gives both parties the right to end the contract without giving reasons.

This condition makes employee feel insecure and exposes them to the risk to terminate their services at any time.

Therefore, it is recommended that the contracts should be fixed to five years for example and they should be subject to the labour law.

As for contracts of indefinite duration, if an employer terminates the employee’s contract, the logic indicates to the transfer of sponsorship.

Since the government is aware that each request for transfer of sponsorship has its own circumstances, it gave the decision-making authority the right to approve the transfer.

There is no doubt that the adoption of the Interior Ministry to court rulings and recommendations of the Department of Human Rights are a sufficient guarantee of the parties standing in front of arbitrariness.

Thus, the exception contained in the sponsorship law is aimed at safeguarding the interests of parties to the work contract which considers both parties the two sides of one coin. This will help the private sector which is considered a partner in the development process.