BUT NOW NITAQAT

It was in 2010 when I had gone to Singapore. Just near the famous Mustafa Mall, I went to a South Indian restaurant. I ordered for masaldosa. While waiting  for the service, to my utter surprise, I saw a tall Chinese chef preparing masaldosa. Only after a few minute, I saw a Chinese waiter, ready to serve me. I kept on thinking on this strange practice but no right reply struck me.  After five days, while shopping, I was in another mall where I saw ethnic  eateries of India, Thailand, China, Sri Lanka etc in a row. We ordered for pakaude. Once again a Chinese boy came to my table with a plateful of sizzling pakaude. On my enquiry, my daughter, who is a PR of Singapore revealed that the workers in all business places, by law, should invariably be from all communities. This did not permit the owners to ignore any particular group and the working together of different ethnic groups promoted fraternity and nationalism among them.

Never before we had heard the name of Nitaqat, which is a labour law of Saudi Arabia, which is being now implemented strictly. The law provides that anywhere, after every ten foreign workers, one has to be a local. Previously, the businessmen of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar etc employed workers from their own country. It was so because of two reasons – firstly, they were more dependable and, secondly they accepted comparatively a smaller payment. This onesided practice was causing unemployment among the sons of the soil. So taking a cue from Singapore, the Saudis also brought a new labour law, named as Nitaqat. It not only stops any exclusion of the local workers but also compels the foreigners who are in Saudi Arabia without any valid documents to follow law. It has badly perturbed the foreign labour, majority of whom happen to be the  Indians.

It has been found that for the present there are 56,700 such illegal Indian workers there. Moreover, with the employment of the Saudis, the already engaged Indians will be surplus. Since they had been given the notice to quicklu quit, there was a great furore aming the affected Indians, the reverberation of which was heard in India as well. In order to sort out the matter, the Indian Foreign Minister rushed to Riyadh. The Saudi Govt cooperated and agreed to extend the deadline to July 3, 2013. As a result, a huge crowd can be seen daily infront of the Indian Embassy there for legalizing their return.

This huge return of the Indian workers from Saudi Arabia is bound to affect the economy of India as huge remittances from that country had brought economic advancement in Kerala, Andhra, UP  and Karnataka. These workers will have to either shift to some other country or start business in their home states. Anyway, this Saudi step is bound to work as a deterrent for the greedy people who  ignored law and brought bad name for the motherland.