By IANS
New Delhi : India has suggested to the United Arab Emirates to include a representative of its interior ministry in the recently formed joint committee on labour welfare to look into cases of harassment of Indian workers in that country.
The suggestion was made in the course of a two-day India-UAE joint commission meeting that concluded here Wednesday.
"We have asked them to include a representative of the Ministry of Interior in the joint committee," an official of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) told IANS. "This will help the joint committee address certain critical issues faced by the Indian workers."
The committee was formed following a labour welfare pact India signed with the UAE in December last year to safeguard the interests of Indian workers. Its first meeting was held last month.
There are around 1.4 million Indians in the UAE, many of them are contract workers.
The MOIA official said that cases of harassment include instances like employers filing false cases of workers absconding leading to the workers being harassed by police, ill workers being stopped from returning to India and housemaids being exploited by employers.
During the joint commission meeting, the two countries also decided to set up a task force on manpower to implement the decisions taken by the joint committee.
"It was decided that immediate action will be taken to form a task force so that decisions taken by the joint committee are implemented expeditiously," the official said.
The two sides also expressed satisfaction that the implementation of the pact had already started.
Speaking at the ministerial-level meeting here Wednesday, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan praised the contribution of expatriate Indians to his country's growth.
"These (ties between India and the UAE) have developed and deepened over the last 30 or 40 years as the UAE has embarked on the process of rapid growth, a process in which I am pleased to note that India – and expatriate Indians – have played a significant part," he said.
This was the ninth meeting of the India-UAE Joint Commission for Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, set up way back in January 1975. Its last meeting was held in September 1994.
With India-UAE ties steadily improving, the joint commission meetings are expected to become more regular.
The meeting also covered a wide range of issues related to commerce, investment opportunities, security, labour, energy, civil aviation and tourism and culture.