India to provide aid for foreign workers

India is readying an emergency social security system for workers who have lost their jobs overseas as a result of the global economic downturn.
Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister, yesterday said his government was taking steps to protect the country's expatriate workforce from the adverse effects of the economic crisis in their place of work and when they returned home. He pledged that their security was a top priority for his Congress party-led administration.
The measures reflect the severity with which this sector of the workforce has been affected over the past months in spite of recent assurances that credit woes in Dubai would not inflict too much damage on a big source of its labour. About 4.5m Indian workers are employed in the Gulf, half of them in the United Arab Emirates.
India is one of the world's biggest recipients of remittances, alongside Mexico and China. Remittances totalled about $50bn in the 2007-08 financial year. While India's largest flows of money come from North America, they had been spurred in recent years by demand for migrant labour in the strengthening economies of oil-exporting Middle Eastern countries.
Remittances play a vital role in the development of poor countries. The World Bank estimates that every dollar transferred to a developing country contributes three dollars to its economy.
The southern state of Kerala in India is particularly dependant on remittances from the Middle East, which represents as much as a quarter of the state's economy.
Addressing a conference of India's diaspora in New Delhi, Mr Singh said many skilled and semi-skilled overseas Indian workers had been badly affected over the past year. -Remittance flows are falling and are forecast at about $40bn (€28bn, £25bn) this year.
"We are conscious of the need to structure an appropriate 'return and resettlement fund' and we are working on a project to provide a social security safety net for the returning workers," Mr Singh said.
New Delhi has set up an Indian Community Welfare Fund in 18 countries to give emergency support to its workers, Mr Singh said. The funds support local welfare measures including food, shelter, repatriation assistance and emergency relief to overseas Indians in distress.
India, Asia's third-largest economy, is also negotiating social security agreements with countries that have a large emigrant Indian population. Such agreements have been signed with Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; while labour agreements - covering recruitment, terms of employment and welfare - have been negotiated with Malaysia, Bahrain and Qatar.
Economists and policymakers have stressed the need for the government to improve social protection to overcome a widening poverty gap. About 300m Indians live on less than a $1 a day.
sahil suhail Anantang