Indian Consulate in Dubai launches free interactive course on digital literacy, AI applications

Dubai: The Indian Consulate in Dubai on Wednesday announced the launch of a free digital educational programme to fight online scams and teach basic Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

Addressing a press conference, the Consul General of India in Dubai, Satish Kumar Sivan said the digital literacy programme aims at enhancing cyber awareness and employability among blue-collar workers.

He said the mission has tied up with the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC), an Indian expat community organisation licensed by the Community Development Authority (CDA) in Dubai, and tech education provider Edapt Technologies, to launch the programme.

“There are a lot of cyber frauds that are happening and also workers need to be educated about AI and its real life applications,” he pointed out.

Sivan said KMCC took up the initiative of launching the programme in which the first module would focus on protecting workers from cyber frauds and the second module would give them good grounding on AI applications.

“This is in line with our desire to serve the vast majority of the Indian expat community in this country, which, according to the recent official information that we received, stands at 4.3million as of 2024 as per the residency visa figures,” the Consul General said.

“It is important for us to ensure that our friends and brothers in this community are thoroughly equipped to face the challenges of the modern world. This programme is a first step in that direction,” he added.

Anwar Naha, general secretary of National KMCC, said the community group came up with the initiative after noticing several news reports about people getting duped through social media scams and other cyber frauds.

He said the group would work with the mission to reach out to blue-collar workers and enroll them in the course which will be provided in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

“The Google forms to register for the course will be sent out from today and we aim to launch the course by the end of April. This course aims to empower the workers and improve their employability as well,” he said.

Once they finish the course, they will be given participatory certificates validated by the consulate.”

Umar Abdussalam, CEO of Edapt Technologies, said the eight-week course offers weekly one-hour sessions which will be live, interactive classes timed as per the convenience of the workers, either in the evening or during the weekend.

“The questionnaire [in the Google form] will help categorise the workers based on the level of their digital literacy. The idea is to help them identify phishing scams, email scams etc.”

Pabitra Kumar Majumder, consul for Labour and Consular Affairs at the Indian Consulate, said the mission has handled several cases of workers getting duped after providing OTP number, Emirates ID and UAE Pass details to strangers. He said other common scams targeting people through social media channels like Facebook and WhatsApp would also be included in the course content.

“We are also trying to educate them regarding scams involving fake recruitment to other countries like Canada, Europe and the US. We have seen many people from Kerala and Tamil Nadu getting cheated in such scams,” he said.

Abdussalam said workers would be equipped with basic AI knowledge.

“AI tools available for generating text, images and visuals will be taught. Also, there is Meta AI available inside WhatsApp itself. This is like having an intelligent assistant for us. It is like adding a few IQ points to their normal life so they can make intelligent and efficient choices throughout their lives,” he pointed out.