Indian expats in UAE urge MEA to reconsider passport fee hike for blue-collar workers

Dubai: A steep hike in Indian passport renewal fees has left thousands of low-income expats in the UAE concerned about how they will pay for the service though most need it just once a decade, say community volunteers.

In the UAE, the fees for different types of passport services for Indian expats have gone up steeply across different categories.

The new fee structure is the first major revision since 2012. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has not officially cited the reasoning behind the scale of the increase. It has reportedly said that the hike reflects rising administrative, processing, printing and security costs.

With the fee for the most sought-after service, a regular passport renewal, jumping from Dh285 to Dh450, a rise of nearly 60 per cent, community volunteers, construction workers, housemaids and school bus attendants told Gulf News the increase could swallow up to half a month's salary for several workers who already send most of their earnings home.

'A shock for expats'

KV Shamsudheen, who has lived in the UAE for five decades and championed the causes of Indian expats, especially workers, on several occasions, said the hike had come as a shock to Indian workers across the Gulf countries.

He estimated that 60 to 70 per cent of Indian expats in the UAE are low-income earners, and that employers rarely cover passport fees themselves.

Shamsudheen pointed to the scale of remittances flowing from the Gulf to India, which receives a total of around $137 billion annually.

He said Gulf-based workers, unlike Indians settled in Western countries, tend to send home the bulk of their earnings rather than spend locally. He called for concessional passport rates for blue-collar workers and low-income families.

Exempt ECR category

Vinod Nambiar, another community member who organises welfare programmes for workers in the UAE, said the increase would hit blue-collar employees hardest, since many earn just Dh800 to Dh1,200 a month.

For them, he said, a single renewal could eat up nearly half a month's income, with most employers leaving workers to cover the cost themselves.

Coincidently, the company he works for celebrated India's 'Chartered Accountants Day' on Wednesday by distributing umbrellas, juices and water to several workers in Dubai.

Vinod, who was in the forefront of the campaign, said: “You see how hard they work in this scorching summer, except for the duration of the midday ban. Reducing the passport fee for them could be the greatest gift by the central government for this section of Non Resident Indians,” he said.

Highlighting that there is a misconception that all expats are high earners, he noted that the majority of the UAE's 4.5 million Indians are workers rather than professionals or businessmen.

He urged the government to offer reduced fees or exemptions for workers, especially those in the Emigration Check Required (ECR) category, suggesting missions could set salary criteria to identify eligible workers.

Calls for a 50% cut

Praveen Kumar, a volunteer who helps repatriate seriously ill patients, suggested missions introduce a 50 per cent concession for workers earning below Dh1,500.

“They can verify it through salary certificates, labour contracts or bank statements,” he said.

Praveen called on the Ministry of External Affairs to treat the issue as a community welfare matter.

Kiran Raveendran, who supports labourers in accommodation complexes in Al Sajja, Sharjah, and Sonapur in Dubai, said the hike would be especially hard on families needing multiple renewals at once.

Having spent years among workers earning less than Dh1,000 a month, he described how carefully many save every dirham, sometimes facing late salaries or accommodation deductions.

Conditions were toughest, he said, for those working in remote, desert-based jobs, and he urged the government to revise the fee down to the minimum.

Need faster, fairer service

Another community volunteer, Salam Kanyappadi, who is known for organising blood donation camps and community events, said the government's priority should be improving service quality rather than raising fees, pointing to long delays in securing renewal appointments.

He called for more passport service centres across the Gulf, simpler renewal procedures for children, multilingual helplines and extended, seven-day service hours, along with fast-track and emergency counters for medical crises, deaths, visa expiry and lost documents.

Expatriates' contribution to India's economy, he said, deserved a more people-centric response.

What workers say

For many workers, the numbers speak for themselves.

Jagdeep Singh from Punjab, who has spent 16 years with a construction company in Dubai, said several workers whom he knows, earn as little as Dh690 to Dh720 a month, with overtime pushing pay to around Dh1,000 to Dh1,200.

Few, he said, earn more than Dh2,000. When he last renewed his passport in 2019, he claimed that additional services pushed his total cost to around Dh460.

“That means the real cost under the new structure could climb even higher now,” he said.

Amit Kumar, another construction worker from Bihar with 16 years in the UAE, renewed his passport in 2018 and expects to do so again in two years.

Calling the new charge "a big amount for people like me,” he hoped fees come down before then.

Rani Mariamma has spent 13 years in the UAE working as a school bus attendant. When she read about the fee hike in Gulf News, her first thought was disbelief. On a monthly income of Dh1,300 to Dh1,500, she said she wondered how workers like her would manage.

After covering expenses, she said many of them are often left with just Dh200 to Dh250 for themselves each month and some companies, she pointed out, don't even provide a flight ticket home. "People back in India might be thinking that all expats are getting great salaries and living their dream lives," she said. "That's not the case."

'Everything is becoming expensive'

Komal Rani, another school bus attendant from Punjab, echoed the concern, saying rising costs across the board made the new fee particularly hard to absorb, and appealed to the government to reconsider the rate for workers like her.

Domestic worker Joshi Pushparaju from Tamil Nadu, who has worked in the UAE for 13 years, said she felt fortunate to have renewed her own passport last year, before the increase.

She recalled paying considerably more in the past for an emergency passport as she failed to get an appointment during her renewal window.

When her husband, an electrician, applied after that, they made sure to submit the application early.

“Yet, the cost still came to around Dh450,” she recalled. Gulf News could not independently verify the exact breakdown of fees paid by Pushparaju and Jagdeep, as costs vary depending on additional services availed.