WPS Compliance For Paylite®

WPS

Wage Protection System or WPS is an electronic salary transfer system that allows organizations to pay employees’ wages through banks, foreign exchange offices and other authorized financial institutions. It is a new initiative from the Central Bank of the UAE along with the UAE Ministry of Labour to provide a safe, secure, efficient and robust mechanism to streamline timely payment of wages to employees by employers.

This system was created by the Central Bank of the UAE, in September 2009, to fulfill the objectives of the Ministry of Labour. Using this, the Ministry will be able to develop a database that records wage payments in the private sector and thus ensure the full and timely payment of contractual wages to a large number of employees.

The WPS has been implemented for the following purposes:

• Committed duty to protect workers' wages
• Providing innovative solutions that help employers safeguard their own interests and reduce the time and effort needed to pay workers' wages
• Taking serious steps to improve job security in order to strengthen work relationships in the UAE and safeguard the rights of all parties concerned
• Entrenching transparency and competitiveness
• Ensuring that the UAE Ministry of Labour is regularly and constantly updated on wages data in the private sector in order to guarantee that employers fulfill their salary obligations
• Taking protective and proactive measures to reduce labour disputes pertaining to wages

WPS targets the following parties from the Ministry partners:

• Workers: each and every person who is employed in the private sector in return for contractual wages and who possesses a labour card issued by the Ministry. Information regarding an employee will be identified by the Personal ID number on the labour card.
• Employers: whoever owns a company or institution registered with the Ministry and hires one or more workers in return for agreed-upon wages
• Banks: the financial institution which the employer has a bank account with, which is used to transfer the wages amount through WPS to the appointed agent to distribute to the labourers
• Agent: any bank, foreign exchange office, or financial institution approved and authorized by the Central Bank of the UAE to offer wages payment services via WPS. The Central Bank of the UAE will issue a regularly updated list showing names of approved and authorized agents

The WPS has now been made compulsory for all Private Institutions, and Companies that do not comply with this system within the deadline will be denied their work permits.

Please check the following presentation for further details.