The Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR) revealed that responded to 1300 legal consulting requests submitted by employees of federal ministries and entities, local and private organizations and the public within and outside UAE during the first half of 2917. The legal services related to human resources policies, legislations and regulations in federal ministries and independent entities.
In this regard, Badriya Al Ayoubi, Director of Policies and Legal Affairs, FAHR, said that the Legal Consulting Team set up in the Authority had dealt with 1300 legal enquiries submitted by federal ministries and independent entities, as well as organizations within and outside UAE during the first half of 2917, compared to 650 requests during the same period in 2016.
40% of enquiries via e-mail to the Consulting Team
Badriya Al Ayoubi indicated that 40% ( 516) of the legal enquiries received by the Authority during the first six months of 2017 were sent through the e-mail dedicated to the Legal Consulting Team, while 352 enquiries were received through the Electronic Support Service Office, and 311 by phone.
According to Al Ayoubi, most of these enquiries focused on appointment, contracts, allowances, transfer, delegation, loan, promotions, leaves, workplace violations, official working hours, termination of service, etc.
The Director of Policies and Legal Affairs stated that 32% of the total enquiries delivered by employees of federal ministries and entities focused on leaves, and 21% on allowance and bonuses in the Federal Government.
Health and Education employees benefited most from legal services
Badriya Al Ayoubi pointed out that the Ministry of Health and Prevention registered the highest demand for legal advice services during the past period, with 159 enquiries, followed by the Ministry of Education with 117, and Ministry of Justice in third place with 67 enquiries.
She said: “The in-house consulting team usually studies the enquiries submitted by employees of the ministries and federal bodies with regard to federal government human resources laws, regulations, legislations and policies. The team’s ultimate goal is to unify legal opinions on all issues presented to FAHR and to document for the legal principles in order to simplify work procedures in the future.”
She added that the Authority held during 2017, a series of meetings and specialized workshops for the ministries and federal bodies which proved to be most frequently requesting for legal services through the monthly reports for the year 20160. These included:
29 legal forums during the first half of 2017
She explained that the Authority developed an integrated plan to hold a series of awareness meetings on human resources regulatory issues during 2017 in 56 ministries and federal entities. According to the plan, a team from the Authority will visit each ministry and federal body separately to highlight the Federal Government’s human resources policies, in particular the provisions of Federal Law No. 17 of 2016, to ensure the proper application thereof, as well as human resource systems and requirements such as Balanced Scorecard, noting that the Authority held during the first half of the year 29 awareness forums.
She emphasized the keenness of FAHR to simplify the communication mechanism for federal ministries and entities wishing to obtain legal advice with the legal consultation team, and provided more than ten different channels for communication with the team. These channels include the online website of the Authority: www.fahr.gov.ae , email address, smart applications, the “Remedy System”, the human resources automation system (OPA), social media (Twitter), official correspondence, legal clinics, live chat, which aims at providing direct contact with all employees with the feature of immediate response to enquiries in addition to the free toll number 600525524 and fax 04/2953444.
Badria Al Ayoubi said: “The Authority has developed a plan to activate the role of those concerned with human resources and legal affairs departments in the federal authorities to enable them to respond effectively to the legal enquiries received from their employees and organize the process of seeking legal advice from the Authority”.
Legal Consulting Team
It should be noted that FAHR had formed a legal consulting team in late 2010 as part of its keenness to create a sound legal culture among the employees of ministries and federal agencies about human resource legislation, policies and regulations applied in the Federal Government, by responding to inquiries and questions related to legal issues.