Despite a government ban on working in Iraq, many Indians still travel to the war-torn country to gain employment by using the UAE and Kuwait as a transit route.
These workers come to the UAE on visit visas and take up menial jobs for a month to a year while waiting for agents to liaise with recruiting companies based in the UAE to get them Iraqi employment visas or entry permits, a news report said.
Iraq requires a large number of labourers as a lot of reconstruction work is going on to rebuild the country.
In 2004, the Indian government imposed a ban on travelling to Iraq after the abduction of three Indian truck drivers. But Indian workers pay as much as Rs 150,000 in cash to agents, who promise to take them to Iraq through the UAE to work as drivers, plumbers or labourers for American and Iraqi companies,
The Khaleej Times reported.
At least 50,000 Indians could be working in Iraq and most do not have any valid documents with them, it said adding even now, "Twenty-five Indians more wait endlessly in dingy accommodations in Sharjah and Dubai desperately hoping they would soon be on their way to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad".
The dangerous conditions in Iraq has not deterred Kashiram, one of the workers waiting in Dubai to get employment in Iraq. "I have taken huge loans to get here and I want to work in Iraq, so I can send money home to my family," the paper qouted him as saying.
Another worker,
Manikyam, says, "Everybody wants to go and we are ready to take all kinds of risks. I don't care if the bombs kill me or if I am kidnapped. All I want is to earn some money for my family, if I can get there."
Indian Ambassador to the UAE, Talmiz Ahmed, says companies that take Indians to Iraq are "clearly violating the laws of the Indian government".
Indians are also flouting the norms, despite being fully aware of the employment restrictions placed on them, he said. Ahmed was the Indian negotiator who helped the release of three Indians kidnapped in Fallujah, 60 km from Baghdad, in July 2004.
In the end, the three were freed after nearly a million dollars was paid as ransom money to the abductors.
"The maximum that Indian government can do is to prevent them from going to Iraq by issuing advisories and stamping their passports. When they leave India, they do not indicate they intend to go to Iraq and once they are out of the country; no authority can physically prevent them from leaving the second country like the UAE to travel to Iraq," Ahmed said.
"As per the embargo, no Indian can come to work in Iraq. However, many come through the UAE and Kuwait and recruiting agents from these two countries bring them into Iraq. The Indian government has been talking to both the UAE and Kuwaiti authorities in this connection," Vijay Kumar, Charge de Affaires at the Indian Embassy in Baghdad, was quoted as saying.