India has submitted a draft agreement to the Kingdom for “consideration with an inbuilt mechanism to protect workers and to address their grievances.” The draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) is modeled on similar agreements that India has endorsed with other Gulf states including the UAE and Qatar during the last few years.
Manohar Ram, charge d'affaires at the Indian Embassy, while announcing the submission of the draft deal, said that New Delhi had already signed bilateral labor agreements with some GCC countries with a view to ensure more protection to the workers who hold temporary contractual visas employed in informal sectors.
Ram also announced the visit of a delegation led by E. Ahamed, Indian minister of state for external affairs, to attend the “Friends of Yemen” meet here.
Ram said the appalling conditions of work and the absence of social security protection for workers, especially female workers in the Gulf region, needed governmental interventions or initiatives launched by the Indian diplomatic missions in cooperation with Saudi and Gulf officials.
Asked about the deportation of Indian workers, especially those staying in Saudi government-run deportation centers, Ram said: “The Indian diplomatic missions in Riyadh and Jeddah had issued about 5,000 emergency travel certificates to Indians during the first quarter of this year alone. In addition embassy and consulate officials visit the centers to identify and help Indian nationals.”
“We, in fact, issued more than 45,000 travel passes to Indian nationals following the announcement of the amnesty by the Saudi government last year,” said Ram. In reply to another question about a large number of Indian workers currently languishing in Saudi jails, he said that these workers include all convicted persons as well as undertrails.
There are a number of workers who are forced to abandon their passports and flee their sponsors because of maltreatment. “But in most of the cases, we have found that the Indian nationals have been convicted or detained on minor charges or petty crimes,” said Ram.
He said that the embassy, as it had done on several past occasions, will seek royal clemency this year again for some of the workers who are currently behind bars on minor charges.
He said the Kingdom and India had ratified an agreement pertaining to the exchange of prisoners. “Now, the procedural details are being laid out by the two sides before the agreement is implemented,” he observed. This will help the Indian prisoners in Saudi jails to spend their jail-terms in India.
Speaking about the diverse labor problems and the initiatives launched by the embassy to solve them, Ram admitted that there are some handicaps because of the increasing workload on the diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia. The demand for consular services at the embassy and consulate has risen considerably over the past few years due to the twin factors of increasing population of Indians in Saudi Arabia and the fact that the missions had to deal with several other problems and projects like school facilities for Indian children.
New Delhi submits draft deal to protect workers
