JEDDAH, 26 November 2002 — The Internet has made our world a much smaller place. It used to be that expatriates in the Kingdom often felt cut off from both social and professional connections back at home. But thanks to the Internet, those days are over.
Take for example the website, www.ideas-gulf.com. This is an online service for Indians residing in the Gulf, or non-resident Indians (NRIs), which serves many purposes. Ideas-gulf.com helps needy students in the Kingdom, provides free medical advice and taxation consultancy, has a virtual Gulf NRI Directory and offers an online employment exchange, among other features. The website has met with an enthusiastic response from the Indian community.
Ideas-gulf.com is the brainchild of Khaja Anwar, a civil engineer by profession. Describing it as a non-commercial and non-political community service organization of Indian professionals in the Gulf, Anwar told Arab News last week that the main objective of ideas-gulf.com is to bring all dedicated Gulf Indian professionals together in the common pursuit of extending help to their deprived compatriots.
He said the organization’s major priorities also include making representations to the Indian government on Gulf NRI issues. To reward those who work for the greater good, the group created the IDEAS — Indian Doctors, Engineers, Architects Association — awards of excellence in community service as well as in literature, science and technology.
As ideas-gulf.com is stressing the virtues of community service it’s no surprise that one of its most popular features is IDEAS Medical Helpline run by Dr. Mohammed Iqbal Musani. Since its launch in the middle of this year, the medical service has answered 924 phone calls and replied to 189 e-mails. The actual number of calls seeking real medical help was 504. Helpline also received 187 calls from Indian women in Jeddah seeking medical assistance for themselves or their children. According to Dr. Musani, 28 patients out of the total received outpatient hospital treatment, while four were admitted as emergency cases involving operations for appendicitis.
All services on ideas-gulf.com are free. In fact, IDEAS encourages use of the website to give the Indian community in the Gulf a common platform for the exchange of information and ideas. The Gulf NRIs Directory Online lists Indian expatriates by professions, their contact addresses and other relevant details.
There is no membership fee for the IDEAS organization, which has branches in Jeddah, Dammam, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain. The number of registered members stands at more than 3,000 all over the Gulf. Membership is growing daily, with about 2,000 applications in the processing stage.
Speaking about IDEAS Employment Exchange Online, Anwar said job hunters could advertise themselves on the ideas-gulf.com website without fee. “We do not charge anything to employers who post jobs available ads on our site. Job hunters can post their CVs too. This is a unique and helpful facility for our community.”
To keep its members interested and the exchange of ideas lively, the website conducts regular polls and forums. The current poll asks which of the three local English language dailies is the most reader friendly. To vote for your favorite newspaper just click to www.ideas-gulf.com.