Bengaluru, Jan 9: The Indian diaspora in Qatar has come up with a special request that India creates and maintains a separate registration cell with details of maids being sent to Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. What makes the request more special is the demand has come from the Indian expats settled in the Gulf nation.
Members of the Qatar delegation, one of the largest Indian contingents with about 140 delegates at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, said: "We care for the maids and other unskilled labourers who come from India. We want India to emulate Phillipines, which maintains a comprehensive database of the maids sent to the Gulf countries. We don't want maids from India to become victims of unscrupulous recruitment agents." The women have been working under the banner of Indian Cultural Centre (ICC) and Indian Community Benevolent Forum (ICBF), the two Doha-based volunteer groups that have been providing succour for distressed In dian in Qatar.
"A majority of the maids are from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. While the people and the authorities of Qatar are good, it is the recruitment agents who take them for a ride.They have absolutely no clue what they are entitled to, how they are supposed to work and what to do in difficult situations," said ICBF member Uma Srinivas Mantha.
Referring to a particular case of Rani (name changed), Uma said, "The scared woman was found running on the streets when she was rescued by a Pakistani man and brought to us. We found out that she had been told in India that she would be working as a nanny in Qatar but after arriving in the country she was asked to work as a cleaner. She resisted and was locked up for five days before she escaped and rescued later."
Joining her, ICC president Milan Arun said the Indian government should ask the recruitment agents to collect all their necessary details before sending maids abroad. "There are 650,000 Indians in Qatar. We do not want fellow Indian's to be cheated and exploited. The Indian government has to make the first move by putting in place a system which has a comprehensive database of the unskilled workers going abroad," he said.
According to a MEA source, there are over 5 lakh Indian maids working in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
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