by Moiz Mannan
Rocked by political storms and buffeted by cyclones, the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, one of the most prolific at sending workers to the Gulf, perhaps had little thought left to spare for its offshore diaspora.
A flood of Gulf returnees, nearly all of them in the category of ‘illegal’ immigrants to the Gulf nations, has at last prompted the government of Andhra Pradesh to launch a web portal aimed at making documentation easy and getting a head count of its diaspora abroad.
We have discussed in this space before how India’s union and various state governments badly failed to put in place proper mechanisms to manage the workforce abroad, especially the blue and white collar workers in the Gulf.
The wide gaps in their preparedness were exposed, once again, in the fallout of a tightening of laws and their stricter implementation by Saudi Arabia. As it turned out, it was more than just the restrictions about employing Saudi nationals that found hundreds of thousands of foreign workers stranded. From all available accounts, most of the affected workers were not necessarily those rendered surplus by the Nitaqat policy, but those whose stay in that country was contrary to its rules in terms of the documents they did or did not possess.
Saudi officials were recently quoted by the media as saying that the legislation is being implemented with an aim to ensure that all immigrants living in the Kingdom have “correct legal status” and claimed that no legal worker has been affected.
Having legal visas supported by proper documents such as educational certificates is the critical issue. It has been quite a task for the authorities in the GCC countries to track down illegal migrants and they have generally ignored irregularities such as working for firms that had not sponsored the expats’ visas or in trades other than those listed on their immigration documents.
That spurred a black market in which foreigners overstayed visas, set up illegal businesses or took low-paid jobs in areas where authorities wanted national workers hired on higher salaries. Saudi Arabia has completed ‘regularisation’ of over 1.4 million Indian workers in the past few months as part of its ‘Nitaqat’ programme, with nearly half of them choosing to change their profession.
According to one estimate more than 150,000 Indians have approached the embassy for regularisation of their documents as part of the ‘Nitaqat’ programme.
By July this year, more than 575,000 regularisations had been carried out in the construction sector, while nearly 230,000 by the trade sector. Similarly, many thousands transferred their services to the food sector, to downstream industries and to the workshops and maintenance sector.
A large number has also transferred their services to the contracting, cleaning and maintenance sector, to individual sponsors, to the transport sector, to the social services and to the agricultural and fishing sector.
Crackdowns against illegal immigrants in Saudi and other Gulf countries would send back as many as 150,000 workers to Andhra Pradesh alone, said one estimate. The expatriates are facing a plethora of problems that includes securing out-pass from the Embassies with great difficulty. However, most of those who applied for amnesty have no money to afford flight tickets. Most claimed that the agents cheated them by promising high-paying jobs. Certainly one can’t find fault with the host countries if they wish to give priority to their nationals in employments. The onus is on India and the manpower exporting states to employ their people so that they don’t have to knock on foreign doors and end up in situations that range from distasteful and disgraceful to distressful and often disastrous.
In 2007, the Overseas Indian Affairs ministry estimated some 40000 Indians returned when a similar amnesty scheme was announced by the UAE government. The Andhra Pradesh government then sponsored the return tickets of some 1200 of them to Hyderabad. Many of them subsequently found it difficult to adjust to life in their villages and nearly 150 of those who returned either committed or attempted suicide.
The fate of migrant workers from Andhra who form the second largest Indian diaspora in the Middle East after Kerala, is in a state of uncertainty. The state has set up an NRI Cell which was established to look after the problems of NRIs, to implement the recommendations of the NRI study group and to coordinate with other departments and with New Delhi. The NRI Cell has been established under the direct supervision of the Chief Minister.
This ministry has now set up a web portal where NRIs can apply online for authentication of educational certificates and for attestation of other certificates/documents. The government expects that this portal, www.apnri.ap.gov., in will help collect information and data regarding NRI workers in Gulf countries and provide relief to those who had to stand in queues to get the work done at the NRI department in state secretariat.
The AP government will have to come alive on the issue and put in place a policy and work out a strategy in tandem with the private and cooperative sector as well as NRI organizations to provide lasting succor to those uprooted from the Gulf.The Peninsula
