Job Discussion Forums

[turkzonline]

veiledsentiments and middle east beast. I hope I am not blunt so please forgive me if I come off that way.

Since you both comment on *many* threads and on *many* countries I must say both of you have assumed an aura of authority. I for one, would like to thank you for your diligent efforts at informing teachers on this forum.

I wonder, would either of you mind laying out the vast first hand experience you have? I'm not concerning academic achievements.

Just if you may, let everybody know the years of experience you have and in which nations and if possible in which decade. That way we can better decide how relevant your comments are.

As I said, both of you are commenting on many threads so must be an authority on everything middle-east. Again, I thank your efforts. After all people are being influenced by you. I know I am. Please let us know.

[veiledsentiments]

Forgive me for being blunt back. Check my profile and if it really matters to you, spend a day or two or three reading my posts. You will find that my experience has been covered regularly - appr 15 years in the Middle East and 13 in the Gulf. I have no obligation to post my CV on here or anywhere else, and it is up to the readers to decide who to believe.

VS

[It's Scary!]

Be careful with this character, VS, soon, "Barbur will weigh in and this thead will get locked!

It's happened before!

[Badar Bin Bada Boom]

[desertdawg]

I work with IAT graduates amongst others and they seem a nice bunch of lads. I think the system is they can choose to opt out of high school and do more technical/vocational stuff (15 - 18). These are the people who are actually thinking about their future as they will be first in the line to be taken on by companies at eighteen.

Often they can live in hostels, so they are a bit more worldly wise too. Ability varies greatly. Some come to me and can barely communicate whilst others are pretty fluent. But from what I've seen so far they do seem quite keen (relatively).

So don't know nothing about IAT or the teachers etc, but you could get a lot worse students.

As an aside I know a lady who works for Kaplan in England and is very happy. However I'm sure it could be a whole different kettle of fish here. Spoke to a friend who has started at HCT Fujairah. He seems happy enough but did say there was a twelve month probation which I was shocked about.

[Middle East Beast]

[Badar Bin Bada Boom]

[It's Scary!]

[Captain_Fil]

Babur sounds like Languatron.

So eerily similar...

...it's scary!

[makeajoyfulnoyes]

IAT has gone through many admin changes and although there are still issues, things seem to be turning for the better. This is from personal friends who have shared their experiences with me.

[crocus]

Going back to Turkzonline's query about VS's experience and her relevant and current knowledge of this part of the world, I know that on several occasions I have kept her up-to-date with things that are going on, when I haven't necessarily wanted to put up a posting myself. I'm absolutely sure others do the same, because she is highly regarded from her time here.

So, Turkzonline, I would stop worrying too much about her not knowing what's happening here these days, and try to treat her as the very valuable resource that she is.

[GriffinParka]

An update from a colleague...

I worked there for a year, and left before the end of my contract due to unforeseen circumstances. The circumstances were that each month the school held back a little more off either my housing allowance or medical expenses or general salary.

They always cited an 'accounting' error. But when I tried to claim nearly 1000 dollars of valid medical expenses I was told flat out after six months of emails and in person requests that I would not be getting it. No reason given. After speaking discretely to over 30 teaching staff members, I found that I was not alone in being owed medical expenses.

This school has over 5 campuses and teachers total in the hundreds. They are all owed some portion of money, either medical, unpaid housing, illegally deducted wages, unpaid holiday airfares, unpaid overtime and unpaid holiday pay. This doesn't include unpaid gratuities when one finishes their contract. These are also increasing in the number of unpaid teachers leaving.

Then, we were given raises. The papers were stamped, and a few months later the raises were retracted. Then a few months later, some of use received the retracted monies back. Many did not.

I decided to leave the school when I was advised that legal action would be useless against a government Emirati run school. That the school has wasta and may lie in court about me should I chose to pursue this case. I was advised to leave the country.

Upon trying to have my visa cancelled and my outstanding holiday airfare paid, and other monies totaling over 80,000 dirhams, I was asked by the Pakistani Human Resource Manager to pay 30,000 dirhams to him to have my EXIT VISA stamped.

I refused. When I went to leave without bothering to try to get my money owed etc., I was stopped at immigration and told the school had placed a spot on my exit and I could not leave without their permission.

I called my embassy. They got involved. The school then LIED to my embassy officials that i had stolen equipement from the school. I told the embassy I had a receipt for returned property, and faxed it to them.

This lie was recorded by my embassy officials from the IAT officials. The embassy told me the school was willing to talk to me and I should go see them. Well I had no choice because I had to have my exit visa stamped.

I went and the Pakistani Human Resource manager again proceeded to demand some form of 'backsheesh' or payment to LEAVE the country. He admitted that I was owed money, but to get my exit visa I would need to pay, "something".

I refused. I went to see the Director of the school and explained my situation. And asked him why they won't let me leave the country since they owed me money and airfare, and I was leaving without it.

In the end after several days, they agreed to let me leave. And they said how sad to lose such a good teacher.

I felt sick to have worked for such a corrupt school and under the umbrella of the UAE gov't. This is a disgrace. No teacher should work for IAT in any city.

[veiledsentiments]

That post brings up a couple questions:

S/he stated that "all" the teachers are owed money for one thing or another. Since there are "hundreds" of teachers, I wonder if it might overstate the situation. We have had some posters claim to be OK with their positions at IAT, so I would presume that they had been paid properly. As usual, if only half of this post is accurate, I certainly wouldn't jump at the chance for a job there.

The other thing is that I have never heard of anyone needing an "exit visa" to leave the UAE. I am guessing that she means that she needs to get the "spot" (stop?) posted on the computers at the airport removed.

VS
(thanks for the kind words, crocus... lots of teachers are afraid to post here either because of their employers or some of our rude posters... but PMs are good for sharing information)

[GlobalDawg]

Just a brief post in reply to this GriffinParka person.

GriffinParka's post is way off the mark. Without going into much detail, the HR administrator is a female and not from Pakistan. There are HR representatives on each campus, but all decisions are made through the administrative headquarters in Al Mafraq. For the most part, IAT is a reputable organization. That said, there are shortcomings as there are with most organizations, but not to the extent that has been suggested/indicated in this post.

As for being owed for medical expenses, there is hardly any situation where an IAT employee would pay out of pocket medical expenses; medical coverage is provided by Daman so most often you only pay the initial co-payment to see a doctor--after seeing a doctor, treatments are covered 100%; at least in my case. I've had major surgery and my wife delivered our child at no cost to us.

Another thing to be corrected about the post is that the schools are not managed by directors. Each school is managed by a principal (I believe all of them are from western countries--one from South Africa) and under each principal there are 2 vice-principals. So, the idea that the schools are run by an independent director is false. There is a lot of accountability within the IAT organization.

Overall, IAT, is not a bad organization. I think the reason some people get a bad impression of IAT is because the various "new" programs that require the hiring of teachers and staff pop up over night and the shortcoming is that the organization fails to invest the time necessary to plan appropriately. Also, like a lot of other organizations in the Middle East--communication is very poor due to language barriers, especially between office staff and teachers and office staff and management--often meaningful information gets lost in the translation.

Global