Abu Dhabi makes Hindi official

■ Indians can now learn about legal procedures, rights

Dubai, Feb. 10: In a landmark decision, Abu Dhabi has included Hindi as the third official language used in its courts, alongside Arabic and English, as part of a move designed to improve access to justice.

The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) on Saturday said it has extended the adoption of interactive forms of statement of claims filed before courts by including the Hindi language alongside Arabic and English in labour cases.

This is aimed at helping Hindi speakers to learn

about litigation procedures, their rights and duties without a language barrier, in addition to facilitating registration procedures via unified forms available through the ADJD website, the judicial body said.

According to official figures,

the UAE population is estimated to be around nine million of which 2/3rd are immigrants from foreign countries.

The Indian community in the UAE, numbering 2.6 million, constitutes 30 per cent of the total population and is the largest expatriate community in the country.

Yousef Saeed Al Abri, undersecretary of the ADJD, said the adoption of multilingual interactive forms for claim sheets, grievances and requests, aims to promote judicial services in line with the plan Tomorrow 2021, and increase the transparency of litigation procedures.

He said that the adoption of new languages comes as part of the bilingual litigation system, the first phase of which was launched in November, 2018. —