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Replying to a question, Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi informed the House that an estimated 50,000 to 1,50,000 workers have returned to India as result of the delay in execution of projects due to economic slowdown and recession in the UAE.
He said most of the workers have returned to India on leave without pay with the expectation that they would be able to go back to the Gulf country once the situation improves.
Ravi said while Indian Missions in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have informed that there has been some job losses in these countries, some Indians have also returned from Malaysia due to economic slowdown.
"Information received from Indian Missions in Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Brunei, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon indicate that there is no report of Indians affected by the recession," the Minister said.
Noting that slowdown has affected almost all sections of people in the US, Ravi said, "Indians working in the US are mostly professionals and the extent of job losses by Indians is, therefore, slightly mitigated by their indispensability to their organisation."
Replying to a separate question, Ravi said the Government has already strengthened the Indian embassies in the US and UAE by posting counselors to render assistance to the Indian workers.
"They will be assisted by local Indian professionals in extending legal, medical and financial counselling to the workers in need," he added.
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Actually the ecnomic crisis continuing still.Its will be end soon after 6-12 months(these are the hopeof every gulf people).i am a computer technicain in saudi arabia..here my place is arar..its aborder of iraq.The ecnomic crisis never affect here.the cause is that here we can't see any large industral companies..only small shops are available.Other places of saudi arabia,like riyad,damam.etc are large scale industral area.,ecnomic crisis affected there.now the company disband some people.also give long leave to workers...same like situation in dubai..All the gulf countries were affected the crisis.This may cause more problem in gulf peolple.If this situation is continuing that may leads to dangerous contion in india.In india about 20-40% of peoples depends gulf money.The people who lost their job in gulf is very dificulty to get another job in India.So we hope that this ecnomiccrisis will end soon.
Sad though it is, expatriates returning home is not surprising at least in the context of construction workers. Workers are recruited on contract with specific understanding that they will be sent back at the end of contract or end of project. Unlike the western countries, expats can never settle down in UAE. The most government of India can do is to introduce an Insurance scheme whereby workers can contribute money while they are employed and can derive survival benefits on losing jobs. It may not be wise to propose any special allowance just because they lose their contractual jobs. And what kind of statistics is it when the Minister says "Between 50,000 and 150,000 have returned? We should have some reasonable range.