By IANS
Dubai : A Kerala Muslim social organisation chartered an Air India Express flight to enable 165 Indian workers head home from Dubai with the three-month general amnesty for illegal workers announced by the UAE government ending Sunday.
“We were involved in helping out the amnesty seekers. From our interaction with them, we understood that many people were struggling to manage cash for air tickets. We took up this matter with the central government as well as the Kerala government. But no response came from their side. So we decided to charter a flight to help these people,” said Puthur Rahman, president of Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC).
The flight had left for the Kerala city of Calicut Saturday.
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.
“I can’t wait to reach home. My children are grown up now. I spent all these years here as an illegal to make some money for the wedding of my three daughters,” Abu Bakr, an Indian living illegally in Dubai for the past 17 years, said before leaving UAE.
UAE government’s initiative came as a big relief to thousands of ordinary workers and employees, who more by default rather than design, were residing illegally in the UAE.
While many such workers had to return home in order to avoid legal action against them after the expiry of the amnesty period, a large number of them were also able to regularise their employment and residency status permitting them to continue to work and stay in the UAE, Khaleej Times reported.
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.