India, UAE to Collaborate for Mutual Recognition of Workers’ Qualifications

A new strategic partnership between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and India will help in solving the problem of lack of recognition of Indian workers’ qualifications by the UAE authorities, Indian ambassador Navdeep Singh Suri said, Gulf News reported.

Both the countries are set to form an institutional mechanism through which qualification of workers will be mutually recognized, Suri said. This will help scores of Indian workers in earning higher wages once their qualifications are recognized, since additional certificates like a diploma help them get better salary.

For several Indian workers employed in the UAE, upgrading their skills has been affected by a technical issue, which is that their qualifications are not recognized by the authorities in the UAE.

“We even spoke with the UAE officials about the possible cooperation in the UAE’s ambitious programs to get into the cutting edge technology and adopting blockchain technology in different parts of the government. It is a great objective! India has already embarked on a program to train a lot of people in blockchain technology,” Suri was quoted as saying by the publication. Blockchain technology is a critical element of cryptocurrencies. The collaboration is largely for skills and certification of workers, and can be expanded to various other sectors, Suri added.

Emphasizing that a new generation of workers will need to be trained in all areas, Suri said that even in the construction sector, workers will need to be trained in other areas like superior mechanization and prefabrication technologies.

The partnership between both the countries will help them keep pace with the advanced technologies in several segments. This will be done through structuring and aligning the training as well as certification programs in a way that is mutually beneficial. “You are not talking about yesterday’s technology but also tomorrow’s technology,” Suri was quoted as saying.

Around 134,000 Indian workers arrived in the UAE in 2017 through India’s eMigrate system, as per the report. “The whole idea is that we want Indian workers to come here with better skills and better wages and be more productive. And the UAE also wants better quality and better productivity,” Suri said.

A delegation from the UAE Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation also met officials of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in New Delhi in March to boost cooperation for reducing the cost of labor force recruitment in the domestic workers segment.