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20,000 Indian workers to fly out of
UAE in March
by
Iaonnis Solomou
Nicosia:
About 20,000 Indian construction workers are being
flown out of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by their employers
on bulk-booked flights on Indian airlines next March,
according to report in Emirates Business. This is due
to the fact that more than half the construction projects
in the UAE, which were estimated at 1.28 trillion dollars,
had been put on hold as a result of the global financial
crisis. The Indian workers are either being sent back
home on long leave, or are being redeployed to work on
projects in other Gulf countries, such as Qatar and Abu
Dhabi. Venu Rajamony, Indian Consul General in Dubai,
said the bulk bookings indicated that the financial crisis
was now impacting on the one million Indian workers currently
employed in the UAE. He pointed out that the financial
crisis has not created a mass termination of workers,
but insisted that the construction companies were relocating
surplus staff to Doha, Qatar, or other cities in the region,
or sending them on long leaves. It should be noted that
Indians form the largest number of foreign labour force
in the UAE accounting for 42.5 percent of the total number
of workers in the country, according to a study carried
out by the Agency for Developing Human Resources and Recruiting
UAE Nationals (Tanmia). The study found that 75 percent
of the expatriate labour force in the UAE comes from Asian
countries and a majority of them is from India. Commenting
on recent reports about 25,000-30,000 work visa cancellations
in Dubai, Rajamony said that the figure was normal and
did not constitute evidence of mass termination of work.
He added that the emigration authorities had recently
issued 13,000 new visas and that the UAE Ministry of Labour
had warned companies to strictly follow the labour laws
and settle all claims before sending workers back home.
