An Employee Stopped Turning Up. Filing an Absconding Report Is Almost Never Your Correct First Move

Article 13 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 requires an employer to keep a worker's file for not less than two years after the worker leaves the job [1]. That obligation exists for a reason. The awkward questions about a bad exit almost never arrive during the exit. They arrive months later, in front of someone who wants to see documents.

An absconding report is a formal notification to a government authority. It is not an HR process, not a disciplinary letter, and not a form your internal policy can create, soften or withdraw at will. Once filed, it is an official statement about another person's status, and your company owns that statement.

Founders reach for it on day two because it feels like the decisive move when a phone is going unanswered. In our experience it is almost never the correct first move. Filing early, or filing on facts you have not established, tends to create a liability for the company rather than resolve one.

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has set up UAE companies, run their establishment cards and cancelled their work permits when people leave. This guide covers what an absconding report actually is, why establishing the facts comes first, how the labour law treats prolonged absence, what you still owe regardless of how someone left, what an uncancelled permit costs your visa quota, and the file you should be able to hand to a stranger twelve months later.

What is an absconding report, and what is it not?

Short answer: it is a formal notification to the authority that issued the work permit, and it changes what official records say about a person. It is not a termination, not a visa cancellation, and not a debt recovery tool.

The report goes to the authority that issued the permit. For a mainland company that is the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation. For a free zone company it is the free zone authority, which runs its own process on its own forms. In DIFC and ADGM the employment regime is different again.

The most useful thing an employer can do at the start is separate the three things they are actually trying to achieve, because a single filing does not deliver any of them on its own.

Real Talk: Every founder who calls us on day two about an absconding report is really asking one of two questions. Either "how do I stop paying for someone who has vanished" or "how do I get my visa slot back". Neither is answered by the report. Both are answered by process, and the process runs faster if you have not already made a formal statement you may need to walk back [5].

The second point matters more than it sounds. An employer who files early on incomplete facts is not in a neutral position afterwards. They are in the position of having asked an authority to record something, and then needing that authority to help them unwind it.

Not sure whether your company is even set up to handle exits cleanly? Talk to a setup expert→

Why is establishing the facts your first obligation, not your first instinct?

Short answer: because an employee in a hospital bed, in custody, or stranded outside the UAE is not absconding, and you cannot tell which situation you are in from silence alone.

Silence is not evidence. It is the absence of evidence, and it is consistent with a long list of situations that have nothing to do with someone walking out on a job.

Consider what the law itself assumes. Article 31 gives a worker up to 90 days of sick leave in the year after probation, at full pay for the first 15 days, half pay for the next 30 and unpaid for the remainder, and it requires the worker to notify the employer within three working days with a medical report [1]. That notification duty presumes a worker capable of making a phone call. Someone unconscious after a road accident is not, and the framework does not stop applying to them because they could not comply with a procedure that assumed they were conscious.

Before you file anything, run a real attempt to make contact and write down what you did as you do it. Call the number in the contract. Call the second number. Message on the channel the person actually uses rather than the one your policy prefers. Email the personal address and the work address. Call the emergency contact in the personnel file. Ask the colleagues who sit nearest to them. Check whether their access badge registered anywhere. Check whether the last salary payment landed or bounced.

Common Mistake: Treating the emergency contact field on the joining form as a formality that nobody ever fills in properly. The day you actually need it is the day you discover it says "friend" and a number that stopped working two years ago. Audit that field across your whole team this month, not the week you need it.

None of that outreach takes long. All of it goes into the file, and all of it is worth having if the matter is ever examined by anyone other than you.

What is the difference between unauthorised absence and abandonment?

Short answer: unauthorised absence is a discipline question inside a live employment relationship. Abandonment is the employee ending that relationship by conduct, and the law handles it through a termination route with its own procedure rather than through a notification.

This distinction does most of the work in this article, and getting it backwards is what produces bad decisions.

Unauthorised absence means the employee is still your employee. They did not attend, they did not have permission, and you have a discipline matter. The relationship is live. Their contract is live. Your obligations under it are live.

Abandonment means the employee has, by their conduct, ended the relationship. That is a much bigger claim, and the decree-law does not let you assert it by feeling strongly about it.

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 came into force on 2 February 2022 and replaced Federal Law No. 8 of 1980 [1]. Article 44 sets out the enumerated grounds on which an employer may terminate a worker without notice, and prolonged unexplained absence sits within that family of grounds. Article 45 gives the worker mirror-image grounds to resign without notice.

Here is the discipline point that matters most, and where a lot of published content goes wrong. We are not going to tell you the number of absence days that triggers anything. The specific day counts, the distinction between continuous and intermittent absence, and any warning that must precede action are set out in the article text itself, and the operational procedure sits with MOHRE or with your free zone authority. Read Article 44 in the source decree-law and confirm the current procedure with the authority that issued your permit [1]. A number you half remember from a forum post is not a basis for a termination decision.

Pro Tip: Notice what Article 44 is. It is a route to terminate without notice. It is a decision you make, with a record, under a legal power that already exists. It is not a request to an authority. An employer who thinks the absconding report is the mechanism for ending the employment has confused a notification with a decision, and will usually end up having made neither properly.

Our UAE labour law guide for employers sets out the contract, probation, notice and termination framework with article numbers, and is the right companion piece to this one.

What order should the internal process actually run in?

Short answer: contact, document, warn, decide, then notify. Reaching for the notification first inverts the order and destroys your own evidence base.

The sequence below is our operating practice for clients, not a statutory timetable. The legal day counts live in Article 44 and in your authority's procedure, and you should confirm both [1].

Quick Math: Article 51 excludes unpaid absence from the period of service used for end of service [1]. Take an employee on a basic wage of AED 8,000 with four years of service. The daily basic is AED 266.67, so 21 days of basic wage is AED 5,600 per completed year, and four years is AED 22,400. Exclude two months of unpaid absence and the qualifying service becomes three years and ten months, giving about AED 21,467. The exclusion is worth roughly AED 933. That is real, and it is nothing like the saving employers imagine when they think a bad exit erases the liability.

Want the exit and cancellation side handled by people who do it weekly? Get a free consultation→

Why is a false or retaliatory absconding report a serious problem for the company?

Short answer: because it is a false statement to a government authority, made by your company, at exactly the moment a labour complaint against you becomes most likely.

We should be blunt about a pattern that exists, because pretending it does not exist helps nobody.

An employee resigns properly. They serve notice under Article 43, which requires not less than 30 and not more than 90 days as agreed in the contract [1]. The employer is annoyed. Somebody in the business suggests that if the employee will not leave quietly, or will not waive something they are owed, the company will report them as absconding.

Do not do this. Not in a softened form, not as a hint, not as a message from a manager who can later be described as freelancing.

Here is why it is a bad idea on purely self interested grounds, before you get anywhere near the ethics.

It does not save you the money. Accrued wages for days actually worked, accrued untaken annual leave and end of service under Article 51 are entitlements [1]. They are not discretionary payments that a report withdraws.

It creates a documented act of retaliation. You have generated a timestamped record of the company acting against an employee immediately after that employee asserted a right. If a complaint follows, that record is now part of the story, and you produced it.

It can destroy the one restriction you actually cared about. Article 10 permits a non-competition provision of up to two years from contract expiry, but that requirement is nullified where the employer terminates the contract in violation of the decree-law, and any claim is not heard once one year has passed [1]. Employers who behave badly at exit routinely hand the departing employee the argument that removes the non-compete. The thing you were trying to protect is the thing you gave away.

It sits next to Article 47. The decree-law addresses illegitimate termination, and a worker who says they were pushed out has a framework to say it in [1].

Common Mistake: Believing that because the employee "will not fight it", a threatened report is a cost free move. People fight it more often than employers expect, they fight it later rather than immediately, and the file you built during the threat phase is the file that gets read.

If you are an employee and this has been threatened against you, understand that disappearing is the one response that makes the employer's version look true. Keep serving your notice, keep your written record, and raise it with MOHRE or your free zone authority rather than with your former manager.

What do you still owe an employee who left badly?

Short answer: wages for days actually worked, accrued untaken leave, and end of service where the service qualifies. The manner of leaving does not cancel entitlement.

This is the part employers most want to be untrue. It is not untrue.

Wages. Days worked are days owed. If salary is being withheld because someone left in a way you did not like, that is a separate problem you are creating for yourself, and your Wages Protection System record will describe it. Our WPS payroll guide covers what the file says about you and what a late or failed file costs.

Annual leave. Article 29 gives 30 days a year, and two days a month where service runs between six and twelve months. The employer may not prevent a worker taking leave accrued over two years [1].

End of service. Article 51 gives 21 days of basic wage for each of the first five years and 30 days a year after that, calculated on the last basic wage rather than the total package, pro rated after one year of continuous service, with unpaid absence excluded and the total not exceeding two years' wage [1].

We are deliberately not re-running the gratuity arithmetic here, because our UAE end of service gratuity guide works through the calculation, the resignation position, the payment deadline and the DIFC and ADGM differences properly.

Real Talk: Money withheld at exit is a loan from your own future at a punitive rate. The employer saves AED 20,000 in month one and spends considerably more than that in management time, adviser fees and distraction across the following year. We have never once seen the arithmetic come out the other way.

What does an uncancelled work permit cost the company?

Short answer: an employee who has gone is still on your establishment file until you cancel them, and until then they occupy a visa slot, sit inside your quota and keep the company attached to their status.

This is the practical cost that founders underestimate, because it does not arrive as an invoice. It arrives as an obstacle when you try to do the next thing.

The UAE dependency chain runs in one direction. Your Ejari or tenancy gates the licence renewal. The licence gates the establishment card. The establishment card gates every single residence visa on your file. Cancellation runs in reverse: dependants, then the individual, then employees, then the establishment card, then the licence.

Visa quota is tied to premises. A flexi desk or a shared desk carries a lower allocation than a private office, and more space generally means more slots. That means a permit sitting unused is not a neutral administrative untidiness. It is capacity you paid for and cannot use.

There is an individual dimension too, and employers routinely forget it. A residence that lapses rather than being cancelled leaves a status question open, and on the immigration side paying a fine does not by itself resolve a violation, because ICP requires that status is adjusted or the person leaves the UAE [2]. Grace periods after expiry or cancellation also differ sharply by permit type, running to 180 days for Golden, Green and Blue residence holders and their family members [3]. None of that is your decision to make on someone else's behalf, which is another reason to complete the cancellation properly rather than leaving a file half closed.

Quick Math: A Dubai free zone package at AED 12,800 in the first year includes one visa [4]. If that single slot is occupied by someone who stopped attending in March and was never cancelled, the replacement you want to onboard in June either waits for the cancellation to complete or costs you a further AED 4,000 to 5,000 for a second slot on a package you already paid for. The uncancelled permit is not free. It is roughly a third of your licence cost again.

Our free zone company setup and mainland company setup pages price both routes with the visa position stated, and our visa cancellation process guide sets out the order. Our work permit renewal guide covers what happens when the three clocks on a permit drift apart, which is exactly the situation an unresolved absence creates.

What documentation should exist before you do anything?

Short answer: a file that a stranger can read in twelve months and understand without you in the room.

That is the whole standard. Article 13 requires you to keep the worker's file for not less than two years after they leave [1], and the point of the requirement is that someone may read it.

Pro Tip: Send formal letters to the address stated in the employment contract, not to the address you have in a chat thread. If the employee moved and never told you, the contract address is still the one you are entitled to use, and using it is part of what makes the process defensible.

Our post-setup services team keeps establishment card, permit and personnel records in order for clients precisely so that the file already exists when something goes wrong, rather than being assembled in a panic afterwards.

Would rather your records were already in order before you need them? Get a free consultation→

What is different for a free zone, DIFC or ADGM employer?

Short answer: your permit was not issued by MOHRE, so MOHRE's process is not yours.

If your employee holds a free zone work permit, the free zone authority issued it and the free zone authority runs the process. Forms, sequence, notification requirements and internal escalation all sit with them. Applying mainland practice by analogy is a good way to do the wrong thing correctly.

DIFC and ADGM are further apart again. They operate their own employment regimes and their own courts, and an employer in either should be reading their own regulations rather than the federal decree-law as their first port of call. Our ADGM versus DIFC comparison covers how differently the two financial free zones operate.

Emirate also matters for the practicalities of where you file and who you speak to. If you are outside Dubai, our pages for business setup in Sharjah and business setup in Ajman cover the local authority position, and Sharjah licences start from around AED 5,750 [4].

Real Talk: The single most common free zone mistake we see is a founder reading a mainland-focused article, following it precisely, and then discovering their zone wanted something different at a different stage. Call your zone's client services desk before you file anything. It is a fifteen minute call that has saved clients months.

What if the employee turns up again?

Short answer: it happens more often than employers expect, and it is far easier to handle if you have not already filed.

The three common versions are the ones from the table earlier. The employee was in hospital and is now discharged. The employee was detained and has been released. The employee went abroad on a family emergency and could not get back.

If you have not filed, this is a discipline conversation and a leave categorisation exercise. Unpleasant, sometimes expensive, entirely manageable.

If you have filed, you now need the authority to unwind a statement your company made. We are not going to describe how that process works or how long it takes, because the mechanics sit with MOHRE and with each free zone and we will not guess at them. Contact the authority that issued the permit and ask. What we will say is that this is the position you were trying to avoid, and that everything in this article is designed to keep you out of it.

Common Mistake: Filing on day two so that the company "has it on record", intending to withdraw it if the employee resurfaces. A formal notification is not a placeholder. Treat it as the last step of a process, not an insurance policy at the start of one.

What does the whole situation cost, in order?

Short answer: the recruitment and visa cost of the replacement is the visible number, and it is usually the smaller one.

Real Client Stories

Real examples from businesses we have helped set up. Names have been changed for privacy.

Faisal, the founder who filed on day three

Faisal ran a twelve person fit out contractor in Dubai. A site supervisor missed two consecutive days without a message, and Faisal filed with the authority on the third morning because he had been told by another founder that this was the standard move.

The supervisor had been hit by a car on his way home on the evening of day one and was admitted with a head injury. His phone was in a hospital property bag. Nobody in the company had ever called the emergency contact, and when they finally did, the number in the file was six years old.

Faisal spent the following weeks trying to correct a filing he had made in three minutes. The employee returned to work. The relationship did not recover, and the man resigned four months later. Faisal still paid his end of service in full, because he owed it.

His comment: "Two days of silence felt like proof. It was proof of nothing. I made a formal statement about a man who was in a hospital bed, and I had not made one phone call that would have told me."

Nadia, the operations director who built the file first

Nadia ran operations for a Sharjah logistics company with thirty one staff. A warehouse coordinator stopped attending. She ran the contact sequence over four days, logged every attempt, called the emergency contact, sent a formal letter to the contract address by courier and kept the receipt.

On day five the emergency contact confirmed the man had left the UAE and started a job elsewhere. Nadia had a file that stated exactly that, from a source, in writing. She took the decision under the relevant termination ground, recorded the basis in a signed memo, then dealt with the authority notification and the cancellation.

The replacement was on site inside six weeks, because the visa slot was actually free by then.

Her comment: "The paperwork felt slow while I was doing it. It was the only reason the rest of it was fast."

Sami, the employer who used the threat as pressure

Sami's media company in a Dubai free zone had a senior designer resign and serve notice properly. Sami wanted her gone the same week and wanted her to waive part of what she was owed. A manager told her that if she did not sign, the company would report her as absconding.

She did not sign. She kept the message. She served her notice, was paid nothing at the end of it, and filed a complaint.

The part Sami had not thought about was his non-compete. He had a two year restriction in her contract and a genuine concern about one specific client. Article 10 nullifies that requirement where the employer terminates the contract in violation of the decree-law [1], and his conduct at exit gave her exactly that argument. He settled, paid what he owed, and had no restriction left worth arguing about.

His comment: "I was trying to save about thirty thousand dirhams and protect one client relationship. I lost the argument on the money and I threw away the clause that was actually worth something."

Establish the facts, then decide, then notify

An absconding report is a formal statement to a UAE authority about another person's status. That is what it is, and it is the reason the order of operations matters so much.

Establish the facts, because silence is consistent with a hospital admission, a detention or a stranded flight, and none of those are abandonment. Build a file a stranger could read. Take the termination decision under the decree-law if the grounds are genuinely made out, and confirm the day counts and the procedure against Article 44 and your own authority rather than against a forum post [1]. Pay what you owe, because Article 51 does not have a bad exit exemption [1]. Cancel the permit, because the slot is costing you your next hire. Keep the file for not less than two years, because Article 13 says so and because you will want it [1].

Since 2013, BusinessDubai.ae has handled establishment cards, work permits, cancellations and the awkward exits that come with running a team in the UAE. We will tell you what your authority actually requires, what the cancellation sequence looks like for your structure, and what your visa quota position will be when the dust settles. Our post-setup services team runs that side for clients so the file is already in order before anyone needs it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is an absconding report in the UAE?

It is a formal notification to the authority that issued the employee's work permit, stating that a sponsored employee has left their job without authorisation. For a mainland company that authority is MOHRE. For a free zone company it is the free zone authority. It is a statement to government, not an internal HR document.

Is an absconding report the same as terminating an employee?

No. Termination is a decision you take under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, with grounds and a record [1]. A notification to an authority is a separate act. Employers who file expecting the employment to end as a result have usually done neither properly.

Does an absconding report cancel the employee's visa?

No. Work permit and residence visa cancellation is its own process, and it is the step that actually frees your visa slot. Our visa cancellation guide covers the order.

How many days of absence before I can file an absconding report?

We will not publish a number, because the day counts and the procedure sit in Article 44 of the decree-law and with the authority that issued your permit [1]. Read the article text and confirm the current requirement with MOHRE or your free zone. A figure remembered from a forum is not a basis for a formal filing.

What should I do on the first day an employee does not turn up?

Try to reach them on every channel you have, including their personal email and the emergency contact in their file, and write down each attempt with the time and outcome. That record is worth more later than anything else you do in the first week.

What if the employee is in hospital?

Then they are not absconding. Article 31 provides sick leave of up to 90 days a year after probation, and requires notification within three working days with a medical report [1]. A worker who was physically unable to make that call has not committed misconduct by being unconscious.

What if the employee has been detained by the police?

Then they are also not absconding, and you have a very different situation. Establish the facts before making any formal statement about their status.

Can I file an absconding report against an employee who resigned?

An employee who has resigned and is serving notice under Article 43 has not absconded [1]. Filing against them is a false statement to an authority and, on the evidence we see, tends to cost the employer far more than it saves.

Can my company use an absconding report to make an employee accept less money?

No, and you should not try. Accrued wages, untaken leave and end of service are entitlements under the decree-law rather than discretionary payments [1]. Using a formal filing as pressure creates a documented act of retaliation at the exact moment a complaint becomes likely.

Do I still have to pay end of service if someone abandoned their job?

End of service under Article 51 is 21 days of basic wage per year for the first five years and 30 days a year after that, on the last basic wage, pro rated after one year of continuous service, with unpaid absence excluded and the total capped at two years' wage [1]. Our gratuity guide works through the calculation and the resignation position.

Does unpaid absence reduce the gratuity?

Yes, because Article 51 excludes unpaid absence from the period of service [1]. On a basic wage of AED 8,000 across four years, excluding two months of unpaid absence reduces the figure by roughly AED 933. It is a real adjustment and a small one.

Do I have to pay salary for days the employee did not work?

Days actually worked are owed. Days not worked are treated according to their proper category, which is why establishing whether the absence was sick leave, authorised leave or unauthorised absence matters before payroll runs.

Can I hold an employee's passport if they stop attending?

No. An employer does not hold an employee's passport as security, and doing so creates its own exposure. If you are holding one, return it.

What happens to my visa quota while the permit is uncancelled?

The slot stays occupied. Visa quota is tied to your premises, so a flexi desk carries a lower allocation than a private office, and an unused permit is capacity you paid for and cannot use. Our free zone visa quota guide covers how allocation works.

How much does it cost me to replace the visa slot?

On mainland packages an additional residency visa runs about AED 4,000 to 5,200, and additional free zone visas typically run AED 4,000 to 5,000 each beyond the one included in a package [4]. Authority fees for the cancellation itself vary, so confirm those with MOHRE or your free zone.

Is the process different in a free zone?

Yes. The free zone authority issued the permit and runs its own process on its own forms. Do not apply mainland practice by analogy. Call your zone's client services desk before filing anything.

What about DIFC and ADGM?

Both operate their own employment regimes and their own courts, separate from the federal decree-law. An employer in either should start with their own regulations. Our ADGM versus DIFC comparison sets out how differently they operate.

What documents should I have before I file anything?

The signed contract, attendance records, a log of every contact attempt with times, the emergency contact call record, formal letters with proof of sending, the leave balance, payroll records and a dated decision memo stating the basis you relied on.

How long do I have to keep the employee's file?

Not less than two years after the worker leaves, under Article 13 [1]. In practice keep it longer, because the questions arrive late.

What if the employee comes back after I have filed?

You will need to approach the authority that issued the permit about their process for that situation. We will not describe the mechanics or the timing, because they sit with MOHRE and with each free zone. This is precisely the position that filing early creates.

Can I file first and withdraw it later if the employee reappears?

Treat a formal notification as the last step of a process rather than an insurance policy at the start of one. It is not a placeholder, and unwinding it is not within your control.

Does a bad exit remove the employee's non-compete obligations?

It can remove yours. Article 10 permits a non-competition provision of up to two years from contract expiry, but nullifies the requirement where the employer terminates the contract in violation of the decree-law, and bars a claim once one year has passed [1]. Employers who behave badly at exit routinely hand the employee that argument.

What notice period applies if I terminate someone for absence?

Article 43 requires not less than 30 and not more than 90 days as agreed in the contract for a normal termination, while Article 44 sets out the enumerated grounds for terminating without notice [1]. Which applies depends on whether the Article 44 grounds are genuinely made out.

I am an employee and my employer has threatened to report me. What should I do?

Do not disappear, because that is the one response that makes their version look true. Keep serving your notice, keep every message in writing, and raise it with MOHRE or your free zone authority rather than with the manager who threatened you.

Should I tell MOHRE or the free zone before I decide anything?

Calling the authority to ask what their process requires is always safe and always useful. Making a formal filing before you have established the facts is neither.

What is the most common mistake employers make here?

Filing on day two because it feels decisive, without a single logged contact attempt in the file. The second most common is believing that a bad exit cancels the money owed. It does not.

Can BusinessDubai handle this for my company?

We handle establishment cards, work permits, cancellations and the personnel record keeping that makes exits manageable, through our post-setup services team. We will also tell you plainly when a situation needs a UAE employment lawyer rather than a service provider.

Related reading: UAE Labour Law Guide for Employers, How to Hire Employees in Dubai, UAE Work Permit Renewal, UAE End of Service Gratuity, UAE WPS Payroll Guide

References

[1] Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation. Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 Regarding the Regulation of Employment Relationships and its amendments, in force 2 February 2022 and replacing Federal Law No. 8 of 1980. Article 10 non-competition of up to two years from contract expiry, nullified where the employer terminates in violation of the decree-law and barred after one year; Article 13 requirement to keep the worker's file for not less than two years after the worker leaves; Article 29 annual leave of 30 days a year; Article 31 sick leave of up to 90 days a year after probation with notification within three working days and a medical report; Articles 43 to 45 on notice of not less than 30 and not more than 90 days and the enumerated grounds for termination and resignation without notice; Article 47 on illegitimate termination; Article 51 end of service of 21 days basic wage per year for the first five years and 30 days a year thereafter, on the last basic wage, excluding unpaid absence and capped at two years' wage. Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 (PDF)

[2] Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP). Payment of visa or residence violation fine, confirming that payment alone does not resolve a status violation and that status must be adjusted or the individual must leave the UAE. Relevant to employers because an uncancelled permit leaves a status question open. ICP visa and residence violation fines

[3] Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP). Grace period provisions following expiry or cancellation of residence, which differ substantially by permit type and should be confirmed for the specific permit involved. ICP grace period service

[4] BusinessDubai.ae money page pricing as at August 2026. Dubai free zone package AED 12,800 in the first year with one visa included and renewal about AED 9,920; Dubai mainland standard AED 18,200 in the first year with no visa included and AED 26,355 with one visa; additional free zone visas typically AED 4,000 to 5,000 each; residency visas on mainland packages an additional AED 4,000 to 5,200; Sharjah licences from around AED 5,750. Free zone company setup and mainland company setup

[5] BusinessDubai.ae. Internal case data from UAE company formations, establishment card administration, work permit cancellations and employer exit matters handled since 2013, including the pattern of early filings later requiring correction and the visa quota consequences of uncancelled permits. businessdubai.ae