ABU DHABI, 23 January 2008 — The Gulf Arab states and labor-exporting Asian countries yesterday agreed to join forces against the exploitation of Asian workers.

Labor ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and their counterparts from Asia will propose an action plan to protect the welfare of workers, according to their Abu Dhabi Declaration.

The ministers have recommended drawing up within three months of a plan aimed at “preventing illegal recruitment practices” both in the country of origin and in host countries. The declaration also called for “promoting welfare and protection measures for contractual workers ... and preventing their exploitation at origin and destination.”

UAE Labor Minister Ali Abdullah Al-Kaabi said at the start of the meeting yesterday that workers must be afforded the security that they would receive the benefits they are entitled to.

The Ministerial Consultation on Overseas Employment and Contractual Labor for Countries of Origin and Destination in Asia (Abu Dhabi Labor Dialogue) was the first of its kind to be held in a major labor-receiving country. The meeting in the UAE capital builds on the Asian Regional Consultative Process on Overseas Employment and Contractual Labor, known as the Colombo Process.

Set up in 2003, the Colombo Process includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam and the aim is initiate dialogue on overseas labor. The six GCC states, with a total population of 35 million people, are heavily dependent on foreign laborers, mostly from Asian countries.

Al-Kaabi called upon his counterparts in both labor-sending and labor-receiving countries to work together over the next months to elevate the agreements in the ministerial joint declaration.

Governments of labor-sending countries, he said, bear the responsibility for protecting workers against illegal recruitment practices and the receiving countries have a stake in combating such illegal practices because they jeopardize the entire employment system.

The minister also reiterated the UAE’s full commitment to ensuring that a contractual worker’s “temporary stay in our country is beneficial to both parties of a work contract.

“But we are also committed to strict enforcement of the law when it comes to persons who are in our country illegally or those who violate the law otherwise,” he added.

Contractual labor mobility, he added, can and should generate value and wealth for all those who hold a stake in it, whether the worker who leaves his or her home country in pursuit of improved economic condition, the country of origin that benefits from reduced unemployment and substantial remittances, or the country of destination that uses contracted expatriate labor in implementing development plans.

The UAE Ministry of Labor, Al-Kaabi added, is working closely with Colombo Process governments to modernize recruitment in ways that reduce the risks of exploitative practices and streamline the processing of employment applications.

“We have agreed that Asian workers are contracted workers, not what some call immigrant workers,” Kaabi said, stressing that those workers stay in the GCC for a limited period.

This would preserve the demographic nature of the countries of the region, an aide explained.

The booming economies of the GCC countries remain in great need of cheap skilled and unskilled labor from Asia. But they are facing increased competition from other countries also in need of skilled Asian labor, according to a senior Sri Lankan delegate.

“When it comes to salaries, there are other countries looking for the same categories of skills. If well trained, they (workers) would not come to the GCC because of salaries,” said Kingsley Ranwaka of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. Studies have suggested the gap between wages in the GCC and some robust Asian economies is closing fast, lessening the appeal of the Gulf market for skilled workers.

The next Abu Dhabi Dialogue Ministerial Consultation will be held in 2010, the declaration said, without specifying a location.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ibrahim Awad, director of the International Migration Program of the ILO, said that they would work with the UAE to streamline the latter’s labor market, with a focus on bringing about parity in salaries and treatment of workers of different nationalities and sexes.