Assistant Professor at Georgetown University-Qatar, Dr Ganesh Seshan. Kammutty VP
By Fazeena Saleem
DOHA: A curriculum to educate migrant workers about saving habits is likely to be introduced in Qatar soon. Georgetown University in Qatar is preparing to develop such a curriculum and educate the workers through workshops.
The initiative has been taken following successful single financial education workshop which was able to make a group of migrant workers from Kerala, India to send home the equivalent of an extra Rs20,000 in the space of just over a year. The amount is almost two months worth of household expenses.
“It was actually a wake up call for many workers,” Dr Ganesh Seshan, an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University-Qatar told The Peninsula yesterday.
“Basic financial education would help them to develop saving habits, so we are looking for developing a curriculum for the migrant workers,” he said.
The curriculum would be developed as the second phase of the ‘Transnational Household Finances: A Field Experiment on the Cross-Border Impact of Financial Education for Migrant Workers’, by the Georgetown University in Qatar funded by the Qatar National Research Fund.
Dr Seshan also explained if a migrant worker has good savings and goes back for good, he or she will not return. And migrant workers will not stay for a longer period as many of them come here for financial reasons.
“It would be ideal if the workers and their families could be educated before leaving their country,” Dr Seshan said.
“Saving is not about building a house, they can’t eat it when they go back for good. Therefore proper financial habits are important,” he added.
The study begun in 2010 on economic and social aspects of workers choose a group of 230 Keralites, as they are among the highest migrant population in the country. All of them were married and their wives live in India. The men and their wives were interviewed.
The financial education workshop was offered in late November 2010. A five hour workshop was conducted by K V Shamshudeen based in the UAE. He is the chair of Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust and has been working to improve the financial welfare of non-resident Indians in the Gulf for over a decade.
The workshop has spoken to the workers on basic methods of changing financial habits by changing attitudes.
“The first question we asked them was, will their families be able to enjoy the same standards of life if they have to return home today,” said Dr Seshan.
“Participants were told to save first and spend next.”
“The speaker advocated the importance of reducing unnecessary spending. They even asked to make pledges to stop smoking,” he said.
A follow-up survey was later done with the same couples between January and April 2012, with the outcomes examined more than a year after the workshop concluded.
The findings were interesting; the workers have started managing finances, increased savings and remittances to their families in India. They have also started joint-financial decision making.
The Peninsula
