Expatriates frustrated with long wait for ‘letter of genuineness’ from Indian embassy

Abu Dhabi: Indian expatriates seeking a ‘letter of genuineness’ from the Indian Embassy for educational certificates are frustrated with the inordinate delays.

The letter is mandatory to get an ‘equivalence certificate’ for educational qualification from the UAE Ministry of Higher Education.

M.K. Lokesh, Indian Ambassador to the UAE told XPRESS that the delay is caused by Indian universities who have to manually verify thousands of certificates.

“From our side, we are writing to the respective universities requesting them to expedite the verification process. It is the responsibility of the universities to respond at the earliest,” said Lokesh.

Several companies in the UAE, especially schools, are insisting their employees get their certificates re-attested by their respective educational institutes in India. Employees have to produce the genuineness letter in order to stamp an employment visa on the passport.

“It has been almost six months since I applied for the letter. But each time I contact the embassy, I get the same response that the verification process is taking time in India,” said V. Bala who has a Masters in Sociology from the Calicut University in Kerala.

Bala, who works for an Indian school here, said that he is planning to fly down to India to expedite the process as his job is at stake.

Many universities in India still do not have a computerised systems to verify certificates.

A source at the Calicut University in Kerala said manual verification takes a long time and creates a huge backlog of requests from various Indian missions, especially from the Gulf region.

“I can’t tell you the numbers. But there are so many requests pending with us. It is not easy to manually verify certificates, especially since they have been issued decades back,” said the official who refused to be identified.

At the Indian Embassy in the UAE, two copies of the applicant’s educational certificates are forwarded to the respective university for verification. Based on the verification report, a ‘genuineness certificate’ is issued.

The Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Indian Consulate in Dubai charge Dh1,058 as fees for verification in addition to fees levied by universities.