By IANS
Dubai/New Delhi : The Indian mission in Dubai has issued over 5,000 emergency certificates to illegal Indian workers to return home following an amnesty scheme launched by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.
By Sunday, the Indian Consulate General in Dubai had received 15,700 applications for emergency certificates and 5,010 certificates have been issued, according to a press statement issued by the Dubai mission.
Early in June, the UAE government had set a deadline of three months for all illegal foreign workers to either get legal status to stay in the country or face deportation.
According to the statement, the consulate has also received around 27,000 passports of Indian citizens from Dubai immigration authorities. The list of passports is available on the mission website www.cgidubai.com.
The mission will distribute these passports at the Indian High School in Dubai from Monday. The statement directed people seeking to retrieve their passports to proceed directly to the Indian High School instead of visiting the mission.
The statement also requested the public who approach the mission for various other services to stagger their visits to Wednesdays and Thursdays as Sundays and Mondays are peak days in view of the extra work generated on account of the amnesty scheme.
An official in the ministry of overseas Indian affairs (MOIA) in New Delhi said the Indian mission in Dubai is taking all precautions to ensure that certificates are not issued to the wrong people.
He said the mission is verifying the identity of those who cannot produce passports and whose names do not exist in the mission's database by getting in touch with the state government concerned.
"On receiving such a request from the mission, the state government gets the identity of the person concerned verified by having the police visit his or her home," the MOIA official said.
He added that all state governments have been requested to process all such requests as fast as possible.
There are around 1.4 million Indians in the UAE.