Seven Years Without A Pay Raise: UAE Foreigners Return

According to many recent surveys, the majority of UAE workers should receive pay increases this year.

But for some people, particularly those in the mid-to-low income brackets, the possibility of a raise is still a far-off fantasy. In order to make ends meet, some haven’t even received a raise in as long as seven years, which forces them to face the extremely tough choice of sending their family back home.

But such dreams seem far off to 40-year-old Pakistani expat Amir Mohammed (name changed). He moved to the UAE over seven years ago, where he worked as a business development executive for a company that produced home goods. I started working at my current company in February 2016. My pay didn’t change even after I produced excellent results and was even given a promotion to business development manager,” Mohammed claimed.

Mohammed moved his family to the UAE in 2017 after starting a new career and enrolling his kids in school there. “The price has been rising annually. The first year I lived in the UAE, the cost of gas was less than Dh2. They did, however, surpass Dh2 and 50 fils in 2018. In a similar vein, my kids’ tuition tripled every year, not including books, uniforms, or other necessities. Mohammed, who presently lives in Sharjah, stated, “The rent for my flat was Dh19,000 in 2017, and the rent for the same flat is over Dh28,000 currently.”