According to a Migrant Rights activist, it was quite difficult for the migrants to understand what’s printed or written as it was in either in Arabic or English.

From Our Correspondent 

DUBAI: Hindi has been included as the third official language, besides Arabic and English, on all interactive forms filed before Abu Dhabi courts in labour cases, UAE media reported. 

The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department on Saturday said the move was aimed at providing foreigners better access to justice, without a language barrier.

“The adoption of multilingual interactive forms for claim sheets, grievances and requests, aims to promote judicial services in line with the plan ‘Tomorrow 2021’, and increase the transparency of litigation procedures,” said Yousef Saeed Al Abri, undersecretary of the judicial department.

Migrants make up at least two-thirds of the five-million population of the United Arab Emirates. 

There are at least 2 million Indians working in the UAE.

Indians in UAE and Migrant Rights CSOs in India welcomed the move. 

“While dealing with civil and criminal cases in which Indian migrants are included, we used to struggle a lot when the official papers are made available only in Arabic and English. It was quite difficult for the migrants to understand what’s printed or written. In some cases, serious errors also have occurred affecting the course of the cases. Now, things would be a bit easy,” Josephine Valaramthi from National Domestic Workers Movement, said.

Al Abri said the move comes under the directive of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is the deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi and the minister of presidential affairs. He is also the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department.

“This is in addition to facilitating registration procedures to the public through simplified and easy forms and raising litigants’ legal awareness via interactive forms of the statements of claims to ensure access to the legal materials related to the subject of the dispute,” Al Abri added.

Authorities have also created bi-lingual language guides to explain complex legal terms and used infographics in an effort to help people understand court processes.

Last November, in a first for the region, Abu Dhabi introduced a rule that all documents in civil and commercial cases should be presented to non-Arabic defendants in English.

“Our courts system is going hand in hand with the ambitious economic plans of our leaders,” Mr Al Abri said at the time.

“A bilingual court will assure clarity, transparency and certainty for non-Arabic parties to a litigation, this is an essential step for improving non-Arabic speaking litigants’ access to justice and for enabling them to make better use of our court services.”