Nakheel rubbishes former employee's claims

Nakheel says that the wellbeing of its employees is of prime importance to the company.

As Nakheel confirmed further job losses last week, it also rubbished claims made by a former expatriate employee, who said the developer is operating a tranched system of termination whereby numbers were kept low to avoid attracting media attention.

The source, who asked to remain unnamed, also said the company no longer provided any support on redundancy, and is targeting expatriates from particular countries with its termination policy.

Many former expatriate employees from the UK, South Africa and Australia are heading home said the former employee.

Another employee, currently working at Nakheel, also said that the company had made 500 people redundant over a period of two weeks.

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The economic downturn has seen many regional developers’ plans stunted by crashing property prices, a lack of finance and defaulting payments from investors.

“Staff made redundant back in December were helped through the transitional period and on to re-employment but not any more, it must have cost too much. We finished on the day we were given notice with a month’s compensation, gratuity and repatriation costs. We’ll be paid at the end of the month for two months,” said the former member of staff.

“By my estimation, three quarters of the Asset Management division has gone - it’s been decimated. Nakheel keeps the number of redundancies low in each division to avoid interest from the press, who it has chosen not to speak to any more,” added the source.

But Nakheel, which has constantly been available for comment, has denied claims of being inconsiderate towards the wellbeing of employees who are made redundant.

“While details of the redundancy package are confidential and are privileged company and employee matters, the wellbeing of our employees is of prime importance to us. Therefore, we have taken into consideration social, financial, and professional welfare in providing redundancy packages,” said a Nakheel spokesperson.

In February, Nakheel merged its design and development department with its Asset Management Department although the developer refused to say how many added redundancies had been made on top of the 500 announced last December.

According to some industry experts, the developer of the Palm trilogy was paying too many, too much, and has now had to cut back its overhead costs considerably, which could be the reason behind its “resource restructuring”.

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