Families in UAE must earn a minimum amount to sponsor a maid

Image used for illustrative purpose. House Spring Cleaning Maid Housework Service, Cleaner Entering Home Door.
GettyimagesIf you're looking at sponsoring a full-time maid in Dubai, then weigh up your options as the UAE has introduced a new policy for domestic help sponsorship. As per the new policy that was introduced some months ago, a sponsor must earn a minimum of Dh25,000 in order to have the maid on his visa. Previously, an expatriate holding a residence visa in the UAE could obtain a visa for a domestic worker if he had a salary not less than Dh6,000 per month or a monthly salary of Dh5,000 with accommodation.
However, this does not mean that those who do not earn Dh25,000 cannot hire full-time maids. Tadbeer centres that have been set up across the country to make sure that people only use legitimate channels to hire help have worked around various packages for citizens and residents, irrespective of their salaries and bank balance.
The centres offer a variety pf packages for hiring a domestic help and have tied up with professional agencies to make it a seamless process that lets you even select a maid from the centres, whom you can interview and take home then and there.
Under this category, you need to pay Dh3,500 monthly for the first five months, if you continue with the same maid, the cost for African maids come down to Dh2,420 from six month onward, while for Indian maid Dh2,800.
It is only in the third package of private sponsorship where the sponsor has to show a salary certificate of Dh25,000, along with his marriage certificate, his spouse visa (as bachelors cannot hire a maid), work contract, title deed of the house and Dewa bill.
Explaining the private sponsorship, the Tadbeer centre representative told Khaleej Times that the first step would be to get the maid's entry permit done for Dh3,403 at the centre, which can be done after submitting the aforementioned documents along with the maid's passport and sponsor's passport, visa and Emirates ID. "The second step is changing her status after issuance of visa, and the last step is the residency visa which will cost Dh5,522. Every step takes two working days for the approval. This is the process of getting a yearly visa of the maid with you as a sponsor," she added.
saman@khaleejtimes.com
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