By IANS
Dubai : The Indian consulate here has received over 39,000 applications for emergency certificates from Indian workers wanting to use the special amnesty scheme for illegal expatriates launched by the UAE government.
The Indian mission has delivered 31,500 emergency certificates to the Indians so far.
The consulate has already distributed around 19,100 of the 40,000 Indian passports received from immigration authorities, according to a statement by the consulate.
Employers here take the passports and other travel documents of foreign workers and deposit them with the UAE immigration department. The passport is usually given back when the job contract expires.
In June, the UAE cabinet had announced a three-month grace period for foreigners present illegally in the country to regularise their status according to the law or leave the country without penalty.
There are around 1.4 million expatriate Indians in the UAE, many of them contract workers. In Dubai alone, Indians comprise over 60 percent of the city’s total population of over 1.4 million.