CHENNAI, India: A new resource center for Indian migrants employed in Gulf states will help reduce the risk of workers being trafficked to fake jobs and exploited, officials said Tuesday.
With a 24 hour helpline and a team of advisers, the Indian Workers’ Resource Center in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates aims to help the thousands of Indian workers in the region who may be at risk of exploitation.
“There are numerous fake job rackets that result in migrant workers finding themselves without proper documentation, low salaries or even without a job once they arrive here,” said Dinesh Kumar, an official at the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi.
“Help for Indian workers in distress will be a phone call away.”
Government figures show there are some 6 million Indian migrants in the six Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Over the years, the Indian government and non-governmental groups have received a steady stream of complaints from migrant workers, ranging from non-payment of wages to torture and abuse.
To register these complaints, a multilingual toll free number (800 INDIA) will be run 24/7 at the Sharjah center, where job offer letters will also be verified to ensure they are not fake.
Besides being duped by job agents, many workers are trapped in low paying jobs, unaware of how to seek legal or financial help, Kumar said.
In many cases, the difference in culture, language and food habits becomes a hurdle for workers migrating from poor Indian families, he added.
“Counsellors will be available at the center to help workers cope with the place and talk about their worries,” Kumar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.
An extension of the Indian government’s safe migration awareness program, the center will also invite workers to camps to educate them on their rights.
“We are largely dealing with blue collar workers, many of them illiterate and unaware of the terms surrounding their work contract,” said Ankit Agarwal of Alankit, the firm collaborating with the Indian government to run the center.
“At the camps, we give out basic information and tell them how to reach us when they are in trouble.”
In 2010, the Indian government opened its first resource center in Dubai. In 2016, the Dubai center received nearly 25,000 calls from workers and more than 2,000 letters, faxes and phone messages, including one from a university professor who wasn’t paid his dues.
India sets up center to help migrant workers in the Gulf
India sets up center to help migrant workers in the Gulf
Qatar says sanctions on Syria must be lifted quickly
“We call for intensified efforts to expedite the lifting of international sanctions on Syria,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari told a regular briefing.
Qatar’s call came a day after a high-level delegation visited Damascus. The Qatari embassy there reopened on Sunday, ending a 13-year rift between the two countries.
“Qatar’s position is clear,” Ansari said. “It’s necessary to lift the sanctions quickly, given that what led to these sanctions is no longer there and that what led to these sanctions were the crimes of the former regime.”
Doha was one of the main backers of the armed rebellion that erupted after Assad’s government crushed a peaceful uprising in 2011.
Unlike several of its neighbors, Qatar had remained a stern critic of Assad and did not renew ties with Syria despite its return to the Arab diplomatic fold last year.
The international community has not rushed to lift sanctions on Syria, waiting to see how the new authorities exercise their power.
Israeli forces kill one Palestinian in West Bank refugee camp
- Palestinian news agency WAFA said Fathi Saeed Odeh Salem died after snipers shot him and fired on the ambulance crew
JERUSALEM: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in a dawn raid on Tuesday on a refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
The Israeli military said the man was killed in a “counter-terrorism” operation that resulted in 18 arrests, while the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Fathi Saeed Odeh Salem died after snipers shot him and fired on ambulance crew.
Hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel triggered the current war in Gaza and a wider conflict on several fronts.
WAFA said Israeli bulldozers demolished infrastructure in the camp, including homes, shops, part of the walls of Al-Salam mosque, which they barricaded off, and part of the camp’s water network.
Israeli army forces patients out of a north Gaza hospital
CAIRO: Israeli troops forced the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and many patients, some of them on foot, arrived at another hospital miles away in Gaza City, the territory’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
The Indonesian Hospital is one of the Gaza Strip’s few still partially functioning hospitals, on its northern edge, an area that has been under intense Israeli military pressure for nearly three months.
Israel says its operation around the three northern Gaza communities surrounding the hospital — Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia — is targeting Hamas militants.
Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate northern Gaza to create a buffer zone, which Israel denies.
Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, said the Israeli army had ordered hospital officials to evacuate it on Monday, before storming it in the early hours of Tuesday and forcing those inside to leave.
He said two other medical facilities in northern Gaza, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, were also subject to frequent assaults by Israeli troops operating in the area.
“Occupation forces have taken the three hospitals out of medical service because of the repeated attacks that undermined them and destroyed parts of them,” Bursh said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Officials at the three hospitals have so far refused orders by Israel to evacuate their facilities or leave patients unattended since the new military offensive began on Oct. 5.
Israel says it has been facilitating the delivery of medical supplies, fuel and the transfer of patients to other hospitals in the enclave during that period in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said they resisted a new order by the army to evacuate hundreds of patients, their companions and staff, adding that the hospital has been under constant Israeli fire that damaged generators, oxygen pumps and parts of the building.
Israeli forces have operated in the vicinity of the hospital since Monday, medics said.
NEW STRIKES
Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment continued elsewhere in the enclave and medics said at least nine Palestinians, including a member of the civil emergency service, were killed in four separate military strikes across the enclave on Tuesday.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has since killed more than 45,200 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
A fresh bid by mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States to end the fighting and release Israeli and foreign hostages has gained momentum this month, though no breakthrough has yet been reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said progress had been made in hostage negotiations with Hamas but that he did not know how much longer it would take to see the results.
Gaps between Israel and Hamas over a possible Gaza ceasefire have narrowed, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials’ remarks on Monday, though crucial differences have yet to be resolved.
Syrian ex-rebel factions agree to merge under defense ministry
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa reached an agreement on Tuesday with former rebel faction chiefs to dissolve all groups and consolidate them under the defense ministry, according to a statement from the new administration.
Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Bashir had said last week that the ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Bashar Assad’s army.
Sharaa will face the daunting task of trying to avoid clashes between the myriad groups.
The country’s new rulers appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency that toppled Bashar Assad, as defense minister in the interim government.
Syria’s historic ethnic and religious minorities include Muslim Kurds and Shiites — who feared during the civil war that any future Sunni Islamist rule would imperil their way of life — as well as Syriac, Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians, and the Druze community.
Sharaa has told Western officials visiting him that the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group he heads, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, will neither seek revenge against the former regime nor repress any religious minority.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Israel PM vows to fight ‘forces of evil’ in message to Christians
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday acknowledged what he described as the steadfast support of Christians worldwide for Israel’s fight against the “forces of evil.”
Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories were preparing for a somber wartime Christmas for the second consecutive year, with the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip casting a shadow over the season.
“You’ve stood by our side resiliently, consistently, forcefully as Israel defends our civilization against barbarism,” Netanyahu said in a video message to Christians across the world.
“We seek peace with all those who wish peace with us, but we will do whatever is necessary to defend the one and only Jewish state, the repository and the source of our common heritage.
“Israel leads the world in fighting the forces of evil and tyranny, but our battle is not yet over. With your support, and with God’s help, I assure you, we shall prevail,” Netanyahu said.
The war in Gaza, which erupted on October 7, 2023 following a deadly Hamas attack on Israel, has significantly impacted the Christian communities in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 45,317 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Israel is home to approximately 185,000 Christians, accounting for about 1.9 percent of the population, with Arab Christians comprising nearly 76 percent of the community, according to data from the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
According to Palestinian officials, about 47,000 Christians reside in the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip.
