By IANS
Dubai : The Indian consulate here has stopped accepting applications for emergency certificates, under the amnesty scheme for illegal foreign workers launched by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government, at the Indian High School here and the Indian Association in Sharjah with effect from Tuesday.
From Wednesday, all such applications for emergency certificates will be received at the Dubai mission from Sundays to Thursdays, between 2 p.m. and 4:30 pm, a mission press release said.
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.
The release said that delivery of emergency certificates and passports received from UAE immigration authorities will also take place in the mission on the same timings.
Employers in UAE 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.
“As of Aug 21, 2007, the Consulate has received 39,838 applications for Emergency Certificates,” the release said, adding that 39,030 certificates have been printed and 36,352 issued.
Of the 40,000 passports of Indian nationals received from the UAE immigration authorities, around 19,565 passports have been distributed to the public.
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 population of over 1.4 million.