THE United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced measures yesterday which are supposed to prevent the abuse of migrant workers.

Labour Minister Saqr Ghobash said three new decrees, which will come into force on January 1 2016, would prevent notorious practices amounting to modern-day slavery.

Migrant workers are often lured to the UAE on the promise of work only to have their passports confiscated by bosses to prevent them leaving. Trade unions are forbidden from organising and strikes are illegal.

“We wanted to ensure that the labour relation is entered into voluntarily and freely and, for such a relationship to continue, the voluntary nature also must continue,” Mr Ghobash said.

“It takes two parties to agree to enter into a work relationship, but it needs only one party to decide to end that work relationship.”

Under the new laws, prospective workers would be asked to sign a standard employment offer in their home country to be filed with the Emirati Labour Ministry.

That agreement would convert to a legal contract once the worker arrived in the UAE and no changes would be allowed without pay and conditions being renegotiated.

But British construction union Ucatt’s acting general secretary Brian Rye expressed scepticism over the so-called reforms.

“At this early stage we would be highly dubious about whether this is going to have any effect on the misery suffered by migrant labourers,” he said

“We’ve seen in other Gulf states reforms which result in little or no change. What is needed is not reforms but a complete sweeping away of laws that deny workers’ basic rights.”