MANILA, Philippines — A cause-oriented group on Monday hailed the decision of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to ease the controversial "sponsor" system that will make it easier for expatriate workers to change jobs without the written consent of their employers.

“We welcome the move of the UAE government when it loosens its ‘sponsor’ rule as it would give leeway and freedom to expatriate workers in terms of travel and the opportunity to change and look for a better job within the UAE,” Migrante-UAE Secretary General Nhel Morona said in a statement.

Earlier, reports quoted UAE Labour Minister Saqr Gobash as saying that "an employee with an expired contract can now obtain a new work permit and shift to another employer" without having to wait six months and have his sponsor's consent.

Gobash said the new measures aim to infuse broader flexibility in the labor market and strike a balance in the contractual relationship between employer and worker.

The new regulation takes effect in January and will "replace the current formalities of transfer of sponsorship for expatriate workers."

However, the measure applies only if the two parties in a labor contract have "ended their work relationship cordially" and the employee has "worked with his employer for at least two years."

The move will largely benefit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Gulf region.

“The sponsorship system requires that an expatriate can work only for the sponsor and is entirely dependent on the contract in order to remain in the country,” John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East coordinator, explained.

Monterona added that usually laborer’s employer is the one who issues the visa invitation letter requiring an employee to work only for the original employer, who is also called the employee’s “sponsor.”

“In essence and in practice, sponsorship system is but an indentured servitude; a person under sponsorship simply called as bonded laborer who is under contract of the employer in exchange for an extension to the period of indenture, which could thereby continue indefinitely,” Monterona said.

Both Morona and Monterona said that in the nature of the prevailing system of sponsorship as practiced in the Gulf States, migrant workers as indentured servants were subject to abuses at the hands of their employers in the homes or fields in which they worked.

Migrante-Middle East is urging other mideast governments, hosting the about 1.8 million OFWs in the Middle East, to follow suit taken by the UAE government when it will ease the “sponsor” system starting January 2011.

It is believed that the new labor measure is favorable for workers because those who have been subjected to inhuman labor conditions will have the opportunity to shift to another much better employer without securing a No Objection Certificate and waiting for the six-month ban to be over.