Govt Mulls Mandatory Orientation For Overseas Job Seekers

The Union government is planning to make the pre-departure orientation program mandatory for overseas job seekers, Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh said. The move is aimed at ensuring the safety of Indians in foreign countries.

“We are in the process of implementing a mandatory pre-departure orientation program as many Indians land in trouble in foreign countries owing to unawareness of the local laws,” Singh said on the sidelines of an outreach program in Thiruvananthapuram on Sept. 14.

The one-day outreach program, organized in association with the Non-Resident Keralite Affairs (NORKA), brought up various issues on migration, steps to curb illegal migration and issues about passports. Senior officials of the External Affairs ministry, NORKA, police department, and representatives of recruiting agencies were present at the event. NORKA is an organization that already conducts these orientation programs for Keralites.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated the outreach program, and emphasized the need for a mechanism to offer assistance to Indians caught in legal issues. He added that the state was trying to make an arrangement with lawyers practicing in foreign countries so they can extend legal assistance to Keralites facing issues abroad.

He asked the Union government to make sure that at least one officer who understood and could speak Malayalam was posted at all foreign missions.

Singh told the media that a 24-hour resource center with officials capable of handling 16 different languages is already present in Dubai. The Indian embassy in the UAE also rolled out a process this month to provide legal and financial help to people under the ambit of the Indian Community Welfare Fund. He added that similar facilities would be started in all Indian missions abroad.

The Ministry of External Affairs is also negotiating with many countries to set minimum wages for jobs in various sectors. Recruitments through the eMigrate portal was made mandatory so that the Union government could have a registry of overseas Indians.

Addressing the initial reluctance of foreign employers for the eMigrate system, he said the hesitancy was fading out as 1.15 lakh people were already registered on it. Kerala has the maximum number of overseas migrants in healthcare sector while Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have the most blue collar workers.

Singh also talked of the need of Central and state governments to work together. “Over the past three years, over 85,000 expatriate Indians have been successfully evacuated from war zones or from troubled areas,” he said, PTI reported. “All embassies and consulates have been instructed to ensure the safety of citizens, though there may be delays if legal issues are involved. In such cases, we need to work in close coordination with the state governments.”