The Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR) revealed that it responded during 2017, to nearly 2400 legal advice requests and enquiries submitted by federal ministries and entities, employees, local and private organizations and the public. The legal services related to human resources policies, legislations and regulations in federal ministries and independent entities.
Hamad Bu Amim, Acting Director of Policies and Legal Affairs, FAHR, said that the Legal Consultation Team at the Authority dealt with huge number of consultancy requests and enquiries (2400) submitted by federal ministries and independent entities, as well as local and private organizations and the public within and outside UAE last year. Distribution of requests was as follows: 1269 were submitted by ministries, 852 by federal independent entities, and 280 by local government institutions, private sector organizations and the public members.
46% of inquiries received via Consultancy Team’s Email
Hamad Bu Amim noted that 46% of the legal enquiries submitted to FAHR during 2017 were delivered via the email address designated to the Consultancy Team, while 24% were received through the Unified Contact Center, and 22% thru the Online Support Desk. He compared the number of legal advice requests for 2017 with previous years’ figures which were as follows: 1376 in 2016, 1153 in 2015, 850 in 2014 and 320 in 2013.
20% of inquiries focus on Allowances & Bonuses
According to Bu Amim, most of these enquiries focused on appointment, contracts, allowances, transfer, delegation, loan, promotions, leaves, workplace violations, official working hours, termination of service, etc.
He said that 32% of the total enquiries delivered by employees of federal ministries and entities were centred around leaves of all types in the Federal Government, compared to 20% for allowances and increments.
Highest demand by Health and Education employees
Bu Amim revealed that the Ministry of Health and Prevention registered the highest demand for legal advice services during 2017, with 269 enquiries, followed by the Ministry of Education with 207, and Ministries of Justice and Human Resources & Emiratization in third and fourth place respectively, with 229 enquiries in total.
Regarding the federal entities that benefited most from legal advice services, Federal Electricity & Water ranked first with 94 legal inquiries, followed by the Federal Authority for Identity and Nationality with 63 inquiries and the National Qualifications Authority in third place, with 56 inquiries.
Acting Director of Policies and Legal Affairs said: “The in-house consulting team usually studies the enquiries submitted by employees of the ministries and federal bodies about federal government human resources laws, regulations, legislations and policies. The team seeks to unify legal opinions on all issues presented to FAHR and to document for the legal principles to simplify work procedures in the future”.
He emphasized the Authority’s keenness to simplify the communication mechanism for federal ministries and entities wishing to obtain legal advice with the legal consultation team and provided more than 12 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, Instagram, LinkedIn), 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.
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.