How to sponsor Domestic Workers (Housemaid/Baby-Sitter/Servant etc.) from Nepal

If you are planning to recruit a female domestic worker (housemaid/baby-sitter/servant/nanny etc.) from Nepal, please be advised to bring the following documents to the Embassy:

1. For the housemaids/Baby-Sitters/Servants who arrived in the UAE up to 06 June 2011:

• A completed Application Form for Attestation of Demand Letter for Domestic Worker
• Bio-page and visa page of the Passport of the employee preferably in a single page – 2 copies
• A copy of the previous visa page of the employee if the currently visa was renewed after 6 June 2011
• A copy of departure (from UAE) and arrival (in Nepal) stamps of the immigration offices of both the countries, if your domestic worker is in Nepal
• A copy of Passport of the Sponsor and for non-Emirati Sponsor also a copy of visa page
• A copy of the medical insurance card of the employee
• Employment Contract (certified by the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs of the UAE) and its two copies
• Minimum basic salary for the domestic employee including housemaid or servant is AED 900.00. Please submit a written undertaking addressing to the Embassy that you will provide AED 900.00 as basic salary besides food and accommodation to the employee if the basic salary appears less than that in the said Contract.

2. For the housemaids/ Baby-Sitters/Servants who arrived/or will arrive in the UAE 7 June 2011 onwards

•     A completed Application Form for Attestation of Demand Letter for Domestic Worker
•     Guarantee and Undertaking Letter – 1 copy
•     Police report of the Sponsor/Employer – 1 copy
•     A salary certificate of the sponsor (sponsors having less than AED 10,000.00 monthly salary excluding the cost of accommodation will not qualify to employ Housemaid; sponsor can also enclose a salary certificate of his/her spouse in cases the salary is less than 10,000.00) issued by his/her employer agency – 1 copy (each)
•     Certified copy of the tenancy contract or house ownership certificate, as applicable – 1 copy (the original certificate should also be shown if the Contract is not certified)
•     Copy of the Sponsor's passport – 1 copy
•     Copy of the Sponsor’s residence visa (for non-Emirati sponsors) – 1 copy
•     Copy of the ID cards – 1 copy
•     Copies of passport, visa, ID (as applicable) of the sponsor's spouse – 1 copy each
•     Copy of the sponsor's marriage certificate – 1 copy
•     Original Entry Visa (of the designated housemaid) and its copies – 2 copies
•     Copy of the Passport of the housemaid – 1 copy
•     Copies of ID, passport or citizenship certificate of the Nepalese national/s with full mailing address including phone numbers and email who recommended the domestic Employee to the Sponsor/Employer—1 copy each
•     Employment Contract – 2 sets (4 pages in each in the given format) basic salary should be at least AED 900.00

 Note:

    Please download the forms and other required documents from the "Download" section of this website or click here to download now.

    Please don’t sign the required documents until/unless the Embassy advises to do so (you need to sign them in presence of an Embassy official).

    Also note that the sponsor should come to the Embassy in person to sign the documents.

    Arranging these documents in the given order will facilitate us towards expediting the attestation process by avoiding possible delays.

    After we check your documents, we ask you to submit these documents along with refundable AED 5000.00 as security deposit (for the new domestic workers only) and AED 300.00 as service charge (non-refundable).

    After the attestation, the contract and a copy of the visa attested (originals) will have to be sent by the sponsor to the employee in Nepal to apply for obtaining Foreign Employment Permit from the Department of Foreign Employment, Kathmandu.

    If all the documents are ready, it will normally take a day to complete the attestation procedure at the Embassy.

    For refunding the deposited amounts, please i) ask the employee to call the Embassy during the working hours or send us an email mentioning her contact number ii) visit the Embassy with a written request by enclosing the copies of your employee's visa cancellation paper and exit paper (Please read the details in the Guarantee and Undertaking Letter and the Contract) or send your authorized representative with the said documents.

Kathmandu lifted ban on housemaids-Nepalese domestic workers allowed to work in Middle East

Nepalese female domestic workers have started coming to the UAE after Nepal lifted the ban on their employment in the Middle East including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

The Nepalese Embassy in the capital receives on average six applications each working day ,most of sponsors are from Dubai; about 80 per cent are Indian expatriates and others are Western nationals of Indian origin, Europeans and Emiratis, said Deepak Adhikari, charge d'affaires.

So far more than 100 women domestic workers have arrived in the UAE, he said.

Although the ban was lifted as of June 6 last year the new regulations for recruitment were framed later and announced in November, the diplomat said.People came to learn about it recently and the number of applications started increasing from early this year, he said.

Although the ban has been lifted, the Nepalese government has put stringent regulations on the foreign employment of housemaids, he said.

The Department of Foreign Employment in Kathmandu has to give a Foreign Employment Permit to a prospective domestic worker to go abroad for employment, based on the attestation of relevant documents by the Nepalese Embassy in the host country, the diplomat said.

A prospective sponsor must submit about 14 documents including a police report proving a clean criminal record, salary certificate showing a minimum Dh10,000 monthly income, excluding cost of accommodation, and an undertaking to pay a minimum Dh900 monthly salary to the housemaid in addition to food and accommodation.

A Dh5,000 refundable security deposit must also be paid at the embassy, he said.

Nepal banned the employment of domestic workers in the Middle East after complaints of harassment, the diplomat said.But Kathmandu decided to lift the ban last year because many Nepalese women were illegally coming to the Middle East via neighbouring countries to work as domestic help, he said.

The female domestic workers who came to the UAE before June 6 must regularise their status in accordance with the new regulations, Adhikari explained.

The stringent regulations for new recruitment are meant to prevent mistreatment of women, he said.

Among the 14 documents required to sponsor a housemaid, a marriage certificate is demanded from a male sponsor only, he said.Unmarried female sponsors are allowed to recruit housemaids.The police clearance report will ensure that the sponsor does not have a criminal background, Adhikari said.

Prepaid mobile volumes poised to soar ME region to grow by 88% in five years

Prepaid Summit: Middle East 2012

Conference, Expo and Awards Networking Dinner,

March 21 2012

Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi Beach Resort & Marina, Dubai

 

• ·         Global mobile money industry reaches revenues of USD 1.6bn in 2011
• ·         60m internet users and 80m mobile phone users in MENA
• ·         65% below 25 years to drive the region’s digital and mobile prepaid growth

Dubai UAE, February 28 2012: Prepaid cards have found their niche in the Middle East as the region’s population embraces a digital and mobile lifestyle, according to Francesco Burelli, Partner at Value Partners Management Consulting.

Burelli, considered a global expert on cards, payments and transaction technologies, is slated to present an exclusive research on mobile money at the upcoming Prepaid Summit 2012.

He observed that strong year-on-year growth in the mobile money industry has global revenues pegged at USD1.6bn in 2011 alone.

“Looking at the Middle East, the mobile money sector, which includes mobile banking, is developing rapidly. Our forecast is that the trend will continue at an average growth of 88 per cent between 2009 and 2013,” he said.

“The nineties saw the mobile phone turn from a luxury to a mass market proposition and this has enabled the launch of additional mobile services, including financial services. Today, mobile is a mainstream distribution and business channel in the financial services landscape.”

He also noted that the Middle East region hosts a large unbanked population made up of immigrant workers and young citizens, suggesting that these two groups have different needs of the services that can be provided through mobile and prepaid technologies.

Meanwhile, James Ratcliff, Editor, Cards International and spokesperson for the Prepaid Summit in Dubai said: “With almost 65 per cent of the population under 25, the Middle East has massive potential in youth-led prepaid services, particularly in areas like online spending, events, and gift cards.”

According to Ratcliff, strong growth is also expected across travel, general purpose, remittance, payroll, and government payments sectors.

The third edition of Prepaid Summit: Middle East returns to Dubai on March 21 with Visa International on-board for the third time in a row as the Summit’s Title Sponsor.

The one day event will see more than 200 industry experts, speakers, delegates, and market analysts come together to identify steps to create revenue models and build successful prepaid products in region.

Children under 15 now need ID card -Eida

Abu Dubai authorities have cancelled a decision to exempt children under 15 from having a national ID card and told their families to register them before the end of a new deadline on October 1.

The announcement by the Emirates National Identity Authority (Eida) follows a decision by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) that all children must produce a national ID card when registering for the new school year.

“Emirati and expatriate families of all children under 15 must apply to register their children with the national identity,” Eida said in a statement carried by the Sharjah-based Arabic language daily 'Al Khaleej'.

“This is a compulsory measure…they should do so before the end of the deadline on October 1 or they will have to pay delay fees.”

The statement said children who do not have separate passports would not be given an ID card, adding that applicants under that age need not come to Eida registration centres as applications can be submitted by their parents.

'Al Khaleej' said Adec’s decision applies only to public schools and the report did not mention whether such measure would be extended to other emirates.

NRIs, hold your remittances: Indian rupee set to fall again

With the Indian rupee appreciating almost 9 per cent in the past nine or so weeks, Indian expats in the UAE and elsewhere have been on the receiving end of the foreign exchange fight, with the dollar (and therefore the UAE dirham) getting clobbered by the now mighty rupee.

Today, one UAE dirham is fetching about Rs13.2 compared with Rs14.62 that it fetched on December 15, 2011, a decline of 8.9 per cent in a little over two months. While last year, the Indian rupee was among the worst performing currencies in the world – declining by 18.7 per cent in 12 months – the Asian currency has gained a lot of traction since the beginning of 2012.

In a nutshell, Gulf expats remitting money have been receiving lesser mileage from their dirhams, dinars and riyals, with most having to remit more of their hard-earned cash to meet fixed exposures in their home country.

However, despite the fact that the rupee has had a decent run in the past 67 days, analysts believe that the rally will, sooner than later, lose steam and that the dollar (and therefore the dirham) may once again trump the Asian currency in coming weeks.

According to Abhijit Chakraborty, Senior Vice-President of Institutional Equity at India-based Fortune Equity Brokers, the rupee could once again fall to below 51-52 levels against the US dollar – i.e., one UAE dirham might soon fetch more than Rs14.15 again.

“I think the rupee carry trade, which was essentially driven by liquidity factors, had taken the market up… I think that is going to take some pause, dollar index could revert back to about 80-81 and rupee could once again go to 51-52 levels,” Chakraborty said in a televised interview with CNBC-TV18, an Indian business news channel.

“The local unit [rupee] should soon witness some weakness towards 50 [against the US dollar], as the continuous increase in the crude prices will severely affect our current account deficit which is already expected to be at 3.5 per cent of GDP by March 2012, the worst in the last eight years,” adds Abhishek Goenka, CEO of India Forex Advisors, in a column in an Indian business daily.

With the oil price hovering close to $120/barrel, his comments may be bang on track in predicting an impending weakness in the Indian currency. Indeed, the rupee might be flattering to deceive as a reasonable share its recent strength is due to unsustainable factors.

The rupee’s appreciation is being credited to a huge sway of investments made by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) as well as non-resident Indians (NRIs) who seem to be taking advantage of the recent changes in regulations resulting in Indian banks offering them some of the highest interest rates in over a decade.

Besides the increase in NRI deposit rates that has reportedly resulted in a sharp increase in inflows, FIIs have pumped in more than $7 billion in the Indian markets since the beginning of the year. Both these factors are likely to slow down.

“Flows of this magnitude in the local markets do not seem sustainable on a month on month basis,” agrees Goenka. And if that is correct, expect more than Rs14 for your dirham sooner than later.