Before you take a job overseas, make sure you know how serious they take drug testing.
Per Metro UK
Connor Clements, 24, moved to the UAE from Liverpool earlier this year after getting ‘stuck in a rut’ in the UK.
Tributes paid to teenagers who died ‘after taking ecstasy’ at nightclub He moved out to join his sister, who already lived in Dubai, and got a job as a waiter. But his new employers carried out a drug test, which reportedly came back with traces of cannabis showing in his system. Connor denies smoking weed in Dubai, and claims the drug was in his system from before he boarded his flight to the UAE.
However, after a hearing he claims ‘lasted less than a minute’, the waiter was sentenced to two years behind bars.
He said: ‘They are saying I smoked it here, but I did [it] back home. They have got no proof… I used to smoke a lot back home. ‘I came here to stop everything. It was a chance for me to change my life, but it’s been nothing but a nightmare.
‘I was in a rut. My sister lives here and I had an opportunity to change my life, and it’s been nothing but a living nightmare… I haven’t committed a crime in the UAE.’ After spending several weeks in prison, he has been granted bail ahead of an appeal hearing just before Christmas. ‘It was a living nightmare,’ he added.
‘They put me in a room with 25 people, I was sleeping on the floor. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I can’t speak Arabic, no one spoke English. I don’t want to go back to prison.’
His passport has now been confiscated, and will only be returned if his appeal is successful.
A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: ‘Our staff in the UAE are assisting a British man following his detention in Dubai. ‘We have visited him on several occasions, made calls to the prosecutor’s office to get updates on his case, and are in regular contact with his family.’ More than 200 British citizens have been detained in the UAE in 2017.
