Distressed Indian workers met visiting Indian Minister M J Akbar
IIK Staff Reporter; Photo: Anwar Sadath Thalasserry
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Large number of distressed Indian workers shared their sorrow and anguish with the visiting Indian Minister Sri M J Akbar at the Indian Embassy premises Tuesday evening.
More than 300 Indian workers from Kharafi National, who had not been paid their salaries for more than six months and has been living under desolate conditions in their camp, arrived in front of the embassy to meet and describe their suffering to the visiting Minister M J Akbar.
Minister M J Akbar met the distressed workers and listened to their grievance carefully and assured that he will take up this as a main agenda during his meeting with the concerned authorities on Wednesday.
Large number of Indian workers from Kharafi National and Bayan Company were not receiving their salaries for the past several months. The workers have become desperate with no salaries and no access to other monetary resources. The thousands of workers stranded at the company’s labour camps, have been suffering for past several months at a stretch without proper medical attention. According to the workers, many of them have already resigned from the company to return back to India. But the company is not giving them their final settlement. "We paid huge amount to the recruitment agents back home before coming to Kuwait. But here we are not even paid our salary and we don’t have any money with us," workers said. "Many of our residencies got expired and are living in Kuwait without residency. We have to pay huge amount as residency fine to leave the country now", workers said to the minister. "It is learned that from October 1st, the company is going to stop the mess facility also in our camp, God knows what we will do," said one of the worker. Workers from Bayan company also told that their passports got destroyed from the company.
Even though Embassy is helping us with whatever way they can, there is no positive action from the company side yet, workers said. Indian Embassy had raised this issue several times with the relevant Kuwaiti authorities, however no concrete action has been taken from the Kuwaiti authorities to solve the issue.
Minister M J Akbar listened to the workers grievances and assured that he will be discussing this issue with the Kuwaiti authorities and will try to find a solution for the issue. M J Akbar will be meeting Minister of social affairs and labour Mrs Hind Al Sabeeh Wednesday morning and it is expected that Mr M J Akbar will include this subject during his meeting.
s