No Gold, But Gloom from Gulf

The dream seems to be over with the Gulf losing its glitter and allure as a land where money and more money can be made. With the global economic recession kicking in, nearly five lakh skilled and unskilled Indian workers are packing up and leaving the Gulf region.

There is hardly a man to be seen in Sadras, a village near Kalpakkam, about 60 km from Chennai. On street after street, busy women bustle along picking children up from schools, shopping, going to the bank and running households. The only males you will find are the very old or the very young; the rest have migrated for work abroad.

Every year, over one-lakh young men leave the villages of Tamil Nadu brimming with hopes of a better future abroad. Most borrow loans at exorbitant interest rates, mortgage or sell their land or wife’s jewellery to get the money to pay an agent. For most of these semiliterate men, the dazzle in their eyes does not last beyond the airports of their host countries.

Yet another Indian Diaspora annual conclave has come and gone. Yet again, there was a refusal on the part of the Indian authorities to address burning issues affecting non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the Gulf region. “Engaging the Diaspora — the Way Forward,” was the theme of the 7th edition of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) ’09 that concluded at Chennai on Friday. Can there really be a way forward only with forming an international council of a bunch of leading lights or distributing citizenship cards to those who never wish to return to India?.

Even as the ministry of overseas Indian affairs is all set to release India’s first-ever policy on migration at the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2009, there are allegations that the government has not considered the real problems of millions of Indians abroad.

The seventh edition of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, which opens here on Wednesday, could see the plight of Indian workers abroad being discussed. While the annual conclave of people of Indian origin is a networking opportunity for participants and a chance for state governments to attract investment, many feel it should also accord priority to discussing rehabilitation of those returning to their homeland.

Hundreds of job seekers are being cheated by overseas manpower recruitment agencies and even though the government has blacklisted several of them no action is being taken, says Dr Bernard D’ Sami of Arunodhaya Migrant Initiatives, an organization that works for migrant workers in the state.

The dream seems to be over with the Gulf losing its glitter and allure as a land where money and more money can be made. With the global economic recession kicking in, nearly five lakh skilled and unskilled Indian workers are packing up and leaving the Gulf region.

Five months back, Saji Pansley returned empty-handed from Jordan after a two-and-half year stint as a domestic worker. She went there for work after an ‘agent’ lured her with “lucrative job opportunities”. Her village, Periyadalai in Tuticorin, had been ravaged by the tsunami and she was desperate for money.

Shattered by the news of the death of their sons in a bomb blast in Iraq on May 8, two families in Tamil Nadu are waiting for help from the state government and the Centre to bring back their bodies. But there has been no official word either from the state government or the external affairs ministry so far.

Oil-rich countries in the Gulf, already confronted by strong labor protests, are facing renewed pressure from India to pay minimum wages for unskilled workers. The effort by India - the largest source of migrant workers in the region, with five million - is the strongest push yet by home countries to win better conditions for their citizens.

India wants oil-rich Gulf nations, already facing strong labour protests, to pay minimum wages for unskilled workers. The move by India—which has five million workers in the Gulf, making it the largest source of migrants—is the strongest push yet by workers’ home countries to win better conditions for their citizens. In the past, countries focused on maintaining the flow of billions of dollars workers send home every year, not their welfare.

Arunodhaya Migrant Initiatives (AMI) has released its "State of the Indian Migrants 2005" year book for the second year in succession. Mrs. Irene Fernandez of Tenaganita attended the launching of the book in early December, 2006.

Kerala has only just managed to out-stage Tamil Nadu as the State sending out the most number of migrants. But Tamil Nadu has stayed on in the second place, a slot it has held intermittently since 2000.

Seeking Equipoise (Blog), 28 April 2006.

A desperate young man walks into the lodge on Wall Tax Road, Chennai. He wants a job and the man sitting in one of the room can offer it to him. The deal is the young man pays the agent Rs.80, 000 and gets a job in Malaysia. The man comes back to the lodge the agent is not there, the job is not there, the money is gone.

For 26 fishing families of Mahabalipuram, 50 km from Chennai, a Filipino couple did more damage than the tsunami did. The Filipino couple ruthlessly assaulted the community, already crippled by the tsunami, inveigling the impoverished fishermen into believing that their act of deception was an offer of help.

The Hindu, 24 April 2006.

Migrant labourers have demanded that they be allowed to vote in the Indian embassy in the country in which they are employed. In their election manifesto released in Chennai on Saturday, representatives of migrant workers and those who have returned home reiterated their right to vote during the May 8 Assembly elections.

It took Tamil Nadu just one year to better Kerala's record of sending the largest number of migrant labourers abroad. In 2004, Tamil Nadu broke all records to notch a figure of 1, 08,964 labourers — the highest so far recorded by the Offices of the Protectors of Emigrants, Ministry of Labour. In 2001, the state had overtaken Kerala only by just a 100 more labourers. This time the difference is over 45,000 labourers.

Unskilled Indian labourers in Asian and Gulf countries were the subject of discussion at the consultation meeting on "State of the Indian migrants and their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS" organized by the Arunodhaya-Migrant Initiatives at the YWCA premises on Friday.

The Hindu, 21 July 2005.

Out of the 4.74 lakh who emigrated for jobs in 2004, the highest number of 1.08 lakhs was from Tamil Nadu. The number of migrants from Tamil Nadu was nearly 19,500 more than that in 2003. A dozen Tamil youths, who overstayed in Singapore, returned to Chennai "bearing signs of whipping".

The Union Labour Ministry has blacklisted 117 companies based in Malaysia on charges of taking jobseekers for a ride with false promises on salaries and work conditions. The most affected people are the semi-skilled and unskilled workers such as domestic helps and plantation workers.

The Hindu, 8 November 2004.

In a State where official data puts the level of awareness of HIV/AIDS at 98 per cent, large pockets of ignorance continue to remain. This is the finding of a study conducted by the Migrant Forum, Chennai, in 2001-2002 (and published in 2004) at and around Kalpakkam, about 60 km from the city, among potential migrants (those who are waiting to go abroad), labourers who have returned (returnees) and their spouses.