21 November 2009
“We have been honouring successful Indian entrepreneurs and winners of various Indian government awards like Padmasree and Pravasi Bharatiya Samman. But the contributions of these Indian construction workers were the pride and prestige of all expatriate Indians here. One can see their share of contributions in all structures that demonstrate the growth of the UAE in such a short span, right from the pavements to the magnificent buildings. But their contributions have remained completely anonymous. This will be the first in the series of programmes to be arranged to recognise their contributions,” Indian Ambassador Talmiz Ahmed said at a press conference here on Thursday.
The workers were selected on the basis on four criteria: their contributions to avoid accidents, save lives, enhance productivity and reduce waste. The embassy asked about 75 companies in the UAE which are employ Indian workers and they gave a list of 200 workers. They were further scrutinised by a selection committee comprising recipients of various Indian government awards for expatriates and representatives of Indian Associations. They pruned the list to 30 workers from seven categories like AC technician, carpenter, electrician and mason, Dr K. Ellangovan, counsellor at the Indian Embassy, said.
“We know 30 is a very small number considering that 65 per cent of the nearly two million Indian nationals in the UAE are blue-collar workers. The selection criteria were not all that scientific. But we wanted to begin somewhere and did not want the urge for perfection to come in the way of doing what is possible now. We will continue this,” the ambassador said.
He also said the embassy is working out a model job contract format for Indian nationals coming to the UAE for employment, so as to reduce the possibility of them getting cheated by recruiting agencies in India or employers here. Introduction of an insurance scheme for Indian workers is also under consideration of the embassy. A welfare centre for Indian workers will be set up in Dubai soon by the Indian mission in the UAE, the ambassador said.
