The three-day official tour to Dubai by the Minister for IT and Panchayat Raj, K.T. Rama Rao, on Saturday assumes significance, not only for the overt purpose of industrial meetings, but also for the Minister’s scheduled visits to labour camps and jails there.
The tentative schedule of the tour, in fact, is confined to only one day for meetings with the industrialists and business heads. The other two days are scheduled for expatriates, and migrant workers.
Mr.Rao, along with an entourage including the Special Chief Secretary to the government and Commissioner for Industrial Promotion K.Pradeep Chandra and Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of the Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TSIIC) Jayesh Ranjan, will start from here on Saturday morning and arrive in Dubai by 1 p.m.
In the evening, he will visit a labour camp to understand the living conditions of the Indian workers there, and meet the expatriate Indians.
The whole of Sunday is earmarked for the programmes by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), while in the evening he would meet the chairman of Lulu Group at Abu dhabi.
On December 15, Mr. Rao will visit a jail in Dubai, to meet and interact with the Indian prisoners lodged there for illegal stay, after which a meeting with the officials of Indian Consulate General is scheduled.
The tour comes as a welcome news for many families of Telangana whose kin are languishing in the jails of Arab countries.
At least 700 Indians, quite a few from Telangana State, are reportedly lodged in the jails of UAE, mostly in Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, for want of valid documents of stay. Majority of them are poor, and lured to Arab lands by brokers who make false promises about jobs and remuneration. Fleeing from the work places unable to bear the harsh conditions, they end up on roads, with their passports confiscated by employees.
Also, close to 30 dead-bodies of Indians await transportation to the homeland, as the family members are too poor to afford the flight charges, according to sources.
