Q: How can I know if a company is legally working in the UAE from India? I was interviewed by an overseas ministry agent company for a job abroad in Abu Dhabi named Continental Securities Ltd. How can I know this company has existence in Abu Dhabi and it's not a fraud? It's been 65 days since I was interviewed by the agent on March 23, 2018. Please guide me.

Q: I am a health professional in Canada. Years back, I posted my CV to work in the middle east on a job site in the gulf. Last week, I got 3 emails claiming from a general hospital in Abu Dhabi, a hospital Dubai and another medicare hospital in Dubai for online recruitment. they showed interest in my CV. All emails were from free accounts (gmail.com address). I chose then to forward an email to the concerned HR department of the concerned hospitals. I forwarded one email to the official email of one of the hospitals (as given on the hospital site). They replied and said, yes, the email is legitimate and you can apply with confidence. Now I got an offer letter from Dubai hospital with handsome salary offer but from a Gmail address. They're asking me to start position in one month only and asking to contact a travel agency based in Dubai. Is it a scam or true? I have forwarded the email to the HR department of the hospital to determine authenticity.

Q: Me and my friend are trapped in an employment scam. One Sharjah-based manpower consultancy offered me a fake offer letter and arranged a visit visa and made us come to Sharjah. Totally he collected AED 19200 from us. We are here for more than 50 days. He sends us to some companies which are not relevant to us and claiming he had given the job but we are not accepting. We both lost our money. How can we file a complaint against him?

The fraudsters allegedly post jobs online or even on reputable websites like #Monster.com or #Naukrigulf.com with too good to be true salaries and unbelievable benefits. Then WITHOUT an interview or fake telephone call interview (which is never done for real jobs in the UAE) provides an offer letter which includes the names and logos of the employer with or without the UAE Embassy stamp and then asks you to pay processing or visa fee to a travel company or exchange companies. BEWARE!

Further to my article Scam Alert: Fake UAE Job Offers, I believe the scam artists have read the same. Yes, I call them the artists as it is an art to fool people. They have paid attention to every aspect of my article and now have come up with an innovative way to scam the job seekers. Therefore, my revised strategy in this article.

The UAE has adopted a major reform in its legislative system that brought about 40 new laws and amendments to the company law, criminal law, personal status, among others. The amendments aim to develop the legislative structure in various sectors, the labor law being one of these, was the most recent. We try in this article to shed light on the changes introduced with the new labor law and their significance on both, the employer and employee.

The UAE Penal Code, like all other laws, addresses the crime of fraud in Article 399 of the UAE Federal Penal Code, which stipulates that whoever seizes, for himself or another, a movable property, or obtains a document or signature thereon, cancellation or destruction thereof or amendment thereto by fraudulent means, or by assuming a false name or capacity, where such an act leads to deception of a victim and leads him to surrender shall be punished by imprisonment or fine.

The provisions of this Law, known as "UAE Labour Law", govern the relationship between employers and employees and other labour matters in the United Arab Emirates. There are special labour related regulations applicable in some of the free zones in the UAE.

According to this Decree, tentative approval to admit a foreign worker for the purpose of employment in the UAE cannot be granted until an Employment Offer that conforms with the Standard Employment Contract is duly signed by the employee and presented to the Ministry of Labour.

The provisions of this Decree-Law, known as "New UAE Labor Law", govern labour relations in the private sector of the United Arab Emirates. The New Labor Law repeals the previous UAE Labor Law (Federal Law No. (8) of 1980).