annual report1-final.qxd - Overseas Indian

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
! Coverage to be extended from Rs. 2 lakh to Rs. 5 lakh.
! Starting of pre-departure Orientation
Programmes for overseas workers with the help of
State Governments.
! Issue of smart cards for emigrant workers
containing all information regarding his/her
employment and insurance.
! Providing 24x7 helpline at 13 identified missions.
! Providing legal aid to overseas workers in
cases of labour related problems.
! Involving NGOs as information resource centers
for providing advice to potential overseas
workers.
! Setting up of the Central Manpower Export
Promotion Council for assigning current requirements
and projecting future labour needs in foreign
destinations.
! Setting up of an Overseas Workers’ Welfare
Fund either by providing a one-time lump sum
grant by the Government or by charging a nominal
amount from the emigrants while granting emigration
clearance.
! Initiatives had been taken to chalk out memorandums
of understanding (MoUs) on manpower
with Oman and Maldives.
In the end, he talked about the importance of
updating the national manpower profile and
reviewing the skill profile in relation to foreign
employment demand and enhancing quality and
certification process.
Binod Khadria, the keynote speaker, gave a presentation
on the theme of overseas employment. He
opined that international migration had risen to the
top of the global policy agenda but the international
community had failed to capitalise on the opportunities
and meet the challenges associated with it.
In his presentation, he pointed out that there was
an unwarranted dichotomy between skilled and
unskilled migrant workers. All of them could legitimately
form part of ‘essential workers’, as referred
in the GRIM Report, 2005.
He talked about the four steps towards an
untapped powerhouse: generic classification of
knowledge and service worker; identifying the
stakeholders; spelling out the supplying and
receiving country stakes in streamlining the service-worker
migration from India (here he pointed
out that low cost labour replacements gave the
receiving countries the advantage of age, wage and
vintage); and job-search, job-certification, hedging
against uncertainties, compensation mechanism,
return passage (preventive as well as curative). He
also spoke about a training, certification and
accreditation hub in South Asia.
Ali Shabbir Mohd talked about the steps taken by
the Andhra Pradesh Government for the Indian
diaspora. He said that his Government now had a
separate Department for the Indian diaspora on the
lines of the Kerala model.
Madhavan, President of the Sharjah Indian
Association, pointed out that NRIs in the Gulf were
facing many problems. Talking about the children
of the NRI families, he wanted the Government to
reserve some quota in official colleges in India. He
said NRI families back home too faced a lot of
problems and the Government should take note of
these things. He also requested that NRI identity
cards should be given.
K. Kumar said that he had spent 35 years of his
life in Dubai and was working for the cause of the
Indian community at Dubai. His main concern was
about the exploitation of women. Another major
issue that he talked about — and many of the delegates
during the discussions raised that issue —
was about the repatriation of human remains. He
pointed out that nobody was looking at this issue.
In Dubai, it was being taken care of by the Indian
Community Welfare Committee, which was just an
organisation. He also talked about the increasing
number of deaths and suicide, homesickness and
unfulfilled dreams of the NRI community in the
Gulf region.
There were short presentations by Abhay Mehta,
T.K. Jose and Suresh Kumar, and most of them
expressed similar concerns and recommended
steps for a better engagement.
In the discussions that followed, there was a lot
of heated debate on various problems that the NRIs
in the Gulf faced. Many of the delegates put their
community and personal experiences in their
respective country of engagements in the Gulf
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