TRIVANDRUM, 13 June — A meeting of organizations representing Kerala’s 1.6 million-strong expatriate community will be held in August to discuss how best their services can be utilized to help ease the state’s economic problems.
“Apart from their own problems which have to be sorted out, the thrust of the meeting would be to see how best they could help Kerala’s reeling economy,” M.M. Hassan, minister for nonresident Keralite (NRK) Affairs, told reporters yesterday.
He said Chief Minister A.K. Antony and other state Cabinet members would hold detailed discussions with the expatriates as this was one of the promises made by the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) prior to the May 10 assembly elections.
The venue of the meeting would either be in Cochin, which is about 220 km from state capital Trivandrum, or the capital itself, Hassan said. “We are now finding out how many of these organizations are there in different parts of the world and we would send them invitations to attend the meeting,” Hassan said. “It is not my department alone who are going to deal with them. Several ministries are going to be invited to take part and quite a number of organizations have by now contacted me and expressed their desire to help Kerala,” Hassan said. “There are several issues regarding the millions of Middle East returnees and we are planning out a different meeting to tackle their issues and to see how best we could utilize their services also,” he added.
Several organizations have asked for a review of the schemes available to NRKs. “Only yesterday, I received a letter from a doctor in America to improve the present insurance scheme which is now available,” Hassan said. “A delegation of FOKANA, a US-based Keralite organization, is meeting me soon.
Before we meet the representatives in August, the government would have a broad idea of how to tackle these issues and that is why the meeting is being scheduled,” he said.
