India working to release citizens in Kuwait

Manama: India has launched a massive offensive to help secure the release and repatriate more than 1,000 Indians held in Kuwait for flouting visa regulations.

Officials at the Indian embassy in Kuwait City said that they have been exerting special efforts to identify the detained Indians and to contact their sponsors to reach a settlement and help them resume their work or return home, local Arabic daily Al Anba reported on Tuesday.

Vidhu P. Nair, the Indian Charge d’Affaires in Kuwait, said that the embassy had contacted the Kuwaiti authorities to help with the release of the detainees.

“Embassy officials have met some of the detainees,” he told the daily. “Some of them have been released following communications with their sponsors while others will leave later,” he told journalists in a briefing on the embassy moves following the arrests.

Kuwaiti media reported that more than 2,130 people were rounded up in flash police raids, mainly in the area of Bneid Al-Gar, on September 19, for allegedly violating visa rules.

Most of the arrested were Indian nationals from Rajasthan who had overstayed their visas or were engaged in activities not included in their visa categories.

In New Delhi, S.M. Krishna, the foreign minister, discussed with Sami Mohammad Al Sulaiman, the Kuwaiti ambassador to India, a possible early release of the Indian workers.

According to the Times of India, the arrests were highlighted after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot wrote a letter to Krishna seeking his intervention.

In the letter, he reportedly called for “appropriate and immediate action at the level of government of India for the expeditious release of the arrested persons.”

The Indian daily reported that their families in Rajasthan, mainly in Banswara and Dungarpur, had appealed to Gehlot for help.

Nationals from other countries were also arrested in the raids, but the majority seemed to be Indians.

Indians form the largest community in Kuwait.

Under the sponsorship system, foreigners cannot take up a job in Kuwait or other Gulf countries that have adopted it unless they have a local sponsor.

The controversial system was introduced to help regulate the flow and presence of millions of foreigners, mainly unskilled labourers and domestic helpers from Asia, in the Gulf countries.

However, abuses and its connection with trafficking in people have made activists to call for its cancellation and the institution of a new system.