Saturday, March 07, 2009

Redundant and in debt in the UAE

Context: As a foreign worker in the UAE, if you lose your job your employer is obliged to inform your bank.

Time Out Dubai:
It was the start of a nightmare that is still not resolved. ‘The week before I was made redundant, I took out a loan to cover a year’s rent on an apartment. My employers were obliged to tell the bank that I no longer worked for them, which they duly did. I went to see the bank to reassure them that I could make the first couple of payments while I looked for a job and they said that was fine and to keep them posted. Then the next day they froze my bank account without telling me.’

To make matters worse, the bank told Stephen he wasn’t allowed to leave the country for Christmas unless he had a guarantor in place for his loan – something which he said he would never expect a friend to do. ‘It was actually quite frightening – one minute I was treated like a valued customer, then suddenly I was made to feel like a criminal,’ he says. ‘You would imagine that as long as I could pay my instalments it would be OK. I told them that I had enough money to pay in January and February and that my partner would pay from then on when she arrived here, but they weren’t interested. You tell them, “I can’t eat, I can’t get to job interviews,” and they’re not interested.’
Take a look at the comments to the article at Time Out and at dubizzle.

3 Comments:

Blogger Keef said...

As long as Dubai/UAE remains in the hands of the current ruling elite, situations like this will continue. I had a friend who had taken out a loan with a well-known multi-national bank. When he wanted to take a job at a much higher salary in another country (where this bank also had operations), they told him he must pay back the loan before he could leave.

7:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

check this out.. .related topic..

http://www.reuters.com/article/dealAtoms/idUSCH125024491320090306?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

10:57 AM  
Anonymous site said...

Little doubt, the dude is totally just.

7:36 PM  

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