If your employer has stopped paying you, the UAE gives you a real complaint channel and a ministry that is obliged to act on it. Most of what stalls a wage claim is not the system: it is filing vaguely, filing late, or calling a phone number that stopped being the right one years ago. This guide walks the process as it actually works in 2026, for you, the worker, and it starts with the two facts that decide more cases than anything else.
You have three months from the day the job ends to bring a claim. And the complaint number quoted all over the internet is not the ministry's labour-claims line. Both of these are explained below, and getting either one wrong can cost you the whole claim.
The three-month clock nobody warns you about
This is the single most important thing on this page. Domestic workers in the UAE are governed by Federal Decree-Law 9 of 2022, not by the general labour law, and Article 28(8) of that law says a court may not hear a claim arising from it after three months have passed from the date the employment relationship ended.
Three months. Not two years. The two-year figure that dominates search results is real, but it belongs to Article 54(9) of the general labour law, which covers company employees and expressly does not cover domestic workers. Anyone quoting it at you is reading the wrong statute, and if you rely on it you may find your claim time-barred while you are still waiting to feel ready.
What this means in practice is simple and slightly uncomfortable: if the relationship has ended and you are owed money, file now. Not after you have found new work, not after one more conversation, not after you get home. The clock started the day the job ended.
The complaint numbers, and the one that is wrong
Search for the MOHRE complaint number and you will be given 80060 with great confidence, on page after page. It is not the ministry's labour-claims line. MOHRE's own contact page lists these:
| Channel | Number | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Labour Claims and Advisory Center | 80084 | Labour claims and legal advice: this is the complaint line |
| Call centre | 600590000 | General enquiries and support |
| From outside the UAE | 00971-68034000 | Calling after you have left the country |
The call centre answers in a long list of languages, with Arabic, English and Urdu on the automated reply, so language is not the barrier it is often assumed to be. Numbers do get changed, so if you are reading this well after publication, spend thirty seconds checking the ministry's contact page before you dial.
What you can actually complain about
Unpaid wages are the clearest case, but they are not the only thing the channel is for, and bundling everything you are owed into one complaint is more effective than filing about the salary and quietly absorbing the rest.
- Unpaid or persistently late wages. The strongest case, because the arithmetic is short and your contract fixes the rate.
- End-of-service dues withheld when the relationship ends, along with any unpaid leave.
- The return air ticket where it falls on the employer and has not been provided.
- Contract terms not honoured: a wage different from the one you signed, denied rest days, or duties far outside what was agreed.
- Passport confiscation. It is unlawful in itself. Name it in the complaint, and if it comes with threats or confinement, call the police on 999 first and let the labour complaint run alongside.
Write each of these as its own line with its own number. A settlement conversation that starts from an itemised list rarely loses a line; one that starts from a single round figure usually does.
| Claim | How to compute it | Evidence that proves it |
|---|---|---|
| Unpaid wages | Months owed × contracted monthly wage | Contract, plus bank transfers or receipts |
| Late wages | Dates due vs dates paid | Your own dated log, plus the transfer records |
| Unused annual leave | Leave days earned and untaken × daily rate | Contract terms, plus your log of days taken |
| End-of-service | Contract clause if you have one, otherwise negotiated | Contract, plus proof of the service period |
| Return ticket | The fare itself | Contract terms and any correspondence about it |
Where to file
There is a complaint service built specifically for domestic workers, and using it rather than the general private-sector form saves a routing step at the start.
| Channel | Best for | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| MOHRE website, domestic workers complaint service | The full formal complaint with documents attached | Your Emirates ID or file number, phone number, evidence files |
| MOHRE UAE app | Filing and tracking from a phone | The same details, app login |
| Labour Claims and Advisory Center, 80084 | Asking how, checking status, urgent situations | Your details, and your reference number if you have filed |
| MOHRE service centres in person | When you want a human, or online access is the barrier | Your documents, physically |
They reach the same system. File once, on whichever is easiest, and keep the reference number. Filing the same case through three channels does not speed it up; it fragments your file and slows it down.
Before you file: the ten minutes that decide the case
A complaint that arrives as a number moves. A complaint that arrives as a feeling waits. Spend ten minutes turning yours into arithmetic.
- Write the total. Months unpaid times your contracted monthly wage, plus anything else owed. "AED 9,000: three months at 3,000" is a claim. "He does not pay me properly" is not.
- Collect the contract. It is the document that establishes the wage figure everything else is calculated from.
- Collect the wage trail: bank transfers, receipts, screenshots of transfers that were promised and never arrived.
- Save the messages. Any thread where money or dates are discussed is evidence, especially a refusal.
- Note three dates: when payment stopped, when you asked, what was answered.
- Photograph your Emirates ID and passport data page and keep the copies somewhere that is not the house.
One legal detail worth knowing while you calculate: your wage is payable in dirhams within ten days of its due date. A wage that is routinely three weeks late is not a soft grievance, it is a breach of the standard contract, and it belongs in the complaint alongside the months that never came at all. If your service has ended, add the end-of-service conversation too, and our gratuity guide explains why that number is negotiated rather than looked up.
What happens after you press submit
Article 23 of the domestic workers law sets the path, and it is shorter than most people expect. The dispute goes to the ministry, the ministry tries to settle it amicably, and if that fails the Executive Regulations require MOHRE to refer the case to the competent court of first instance within two weeks of the complaint being filed, together with a memorandum summarising the dispute, both sides' arguments and the ministry's own recommendation.
That memorandum is worth understanding, because it is the ministry putting its view of your case in front of the judge before you ever walk in. It is built from what you filed. A complaint with a contract, a wage trail and a clear total produces a very different memorandum from one with a paragraph of narrative.
There is also a threshold that decides a great many domestic-worker cases without a courtroom at all. Where the claim is AED 50,000 or less, MOHRE can issue a final, executable decision itself rather than sending it on. Most unpaid-wage claims for domestic work sit comfortably under that ceiling, which is why so many of these cases finish at the ministry.
| Stage | What happens | Your job |
|---|---|---|
| Filing | The complaint is registered and given a reference number | File a total, not a story. Attach everything |
| Amicable settlement | MOHRE contacts the employer and tries to settle | Attend everything you are called to. Answer through the process |
| Ministry decision (claims up to AED 50,000) | MOHRE can issue a final, executable decision | Keep your evidence available and your contact details current |
| Referral to court | Within two weeks of filing, with the ministry's memorandum | Nothing changes about your side: the file is the file |
The insurance behind your wages
This is the least-known protection in the picture and the one that changes conversations. Employers of domestic workers buy a mandatory worker-protection policy, and it covers, among other things, unpaid wages for up to the last 120 days, unpaid end-of-service entitlements, unused annual leave paid in cash, and the return air ticket, up to a combined total of AED 20,000. You can read the official description on the UAE Government's worker protection insurance page.
In plain terms: an employer who says he cannot afford to pay you is describing exactly the situation the policy exists for. A MOHRE complaint is the route that brings it into play, which is another reason not to settle quietly for less than you are owed.
The counter-move to expect
Wage complaints sometimes produce an absence report, filed against you as a response. It is worth knowing the shape of it in advance so it does not frighten you into dropping a valid claim. An employer can report a domestic worker absent after more than seven consecutive days of absence where the worker is unreachable and the whereabouts are unknown, and there is a formal route to withdraw a report that should not have been filed. How the process works from the employer's side is set out in our absconding guide.
- Do not leave the workplace mid-dispute without advice. A complaint is not a resignation, and walking out is what makes an absence report possible.
- Keep your documents with you. Your Emirates ID and passport are yours.
- Answer through the process, not the argument. Undocumented allegations carry little weight against a contract and a wage trail.
- Never sign a full and final receipt for money you have not actually received. It is the one piece of paper that can beat your paper trail.
If you have already left the UAE
You can still file, and people do. But be honest with yourself about the two things working against you: everything moves slower from abroad, and the three-month clock in Article 28(8) is running regardless of which country you are in. If you are owed money and an exit is coming, the order of operations is to file first and fly second, keeping your reference number, so there is a live case with your evidence attached rather than an email from another country.
Before you go, make sure your own status and paperwork are in order, because a dispute is a bad time to discover a surprise. Our visa status guide covers checking exactly where you stand.
Common mistakes that lose valid claims
- Waiting. Three months from termination is the bar, and it is far shorter than the two years most articles quote at you.
- Calling 80060. It is the number everyone repeats and it is not the labour-claims line. Use 80084.
- Filing a story instead of a total. Numbers move systems; narratives wait.
- Filing with no attachments. The contract and the wage trail are usually the whole case.
- Missing a session you were called to. It is the most common self-inflicted delay in the entire process.
- Accepting a promise and dropping the case. Pause when the money arrives, not when it is offered.
The bottom line
A total, a contract, a wage trail and one channel: that is the method. File on 80084 or through the domestic workers complaint service, expect amicable settlement first and a referral to court within two weeks if it fails, know that claims up to AED 20,000 of unpaid dues sit behind a mandatory insurance policy and that MOHRE can decide claims up to AED 50,000 outright. And file inside three months of the job ending, because that is the deadline that quietly ends more valid claims than any employer ever does. If the underlying question is what you are owed rather than how to claim it, the gratuity guide and the guide to the domestic workers law do that arithmetic.
