Dubai, June 20: Indian diplomatic missions in the UAE will blacklist companies that cheat Indian workers, the Indian Ambassador to the UAE M.K. Lokesh warned on Saturday.
Services for attestation of employment documents for recruiting workers from India will be denied to employers, including Indians, if they have a record of duping or ditching their employees, according to the top diplomat.
He said this while responding to workers’ issues brought to his attention by members of the Indian Media Forum (IMF) in Dubai.
At a “Meet the Press” function organised by the IMF, an association of Indian journalists based in the UAE, the Ambassador also promised to personally visit the labour camps of some companies whose workers’ plight was described to him by the journalists.Lokesh also promised to look into the cases of workers who are reportedly trapped by their employers who took bank loans in the names of workers after producing inflated salary certificates.
He said the web-based attestation of work contracts and documents, which is scheduled to be launched in August, and the Indian Workers’ Resource Centre, which will be established soon in Dubai, will help in addressing workers’ welfare issues in a better way.
The online work contract attestation project, he said, will help in tracking the records of every company that recruits workers from India.
“If a company violates their own undertakings, we will know immediately. It will help us take some measures in whatever possible way within the powers we have, which is not the case now.
If a company cheats a worker, now the same company can come again to the embassy for attestation for other workers.
But this online database will help us track the records of the cheating employers and blacklist them,” said Lokesh.
The Indian government, he said, has been engaging the local government to address such issues diplomatically, and efforts are continuing to resolve them with more bilateral cooperation.
“We hope the 24-hour helpline under IWRC will help workers to directly inform their problems. Such complaints will be monitored on a regular basis and the system will be computerised to make it more professional.”
The Ambassador added that a proposal from the Life Insurance Corporation in India to introduce a health insurance scheme for Indian workers in the UAE was also under consideration.
–Agencies