New Delhi: The Supreme Court has agreed to intervene for the well-being of more than 3,000 Indian workers who are reportedly stranded in Kuwait in a state of penury.
A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi has sought replies from the Ministries of External Affairs and Home Affairs about steps being taken to provide assistance to the workmen and help them come back.
The court issued notices to the Centre, seeking the responses from the ministries concerned within two weeks. The PIL is likely to come up for hearing again on February 23.
The petition filed by social activist Nowhera Shaik sought an urgent intervention by the top court to ascertain well-being of over 3,000 Indian citizens in Kuwait.
"It is with extreme distress that the petitioner has been reading in the newspapers that around 3,500 Indian citizens who were hired as workers by a construction company named ‘Kharafi National’ have now been disowned and stranded by the said company in Kuwait. The company has not paid the salaries since more than one year," stated the petition filed through advocate Vineet Dhanda and JP Dhanda.
It contended that the lives of those Indian workers in Kuwait have been put into serious jeopardy as they neither have money nor have any sort of help to survive in foreign land.
"The Indian Government, despite requisite knowledge about the apathy of the said workers, is ignorant about its own citizens stranded in foreign land. It is the urgent need of the hour that the Hon’ble Apex Court intervenes in this case for the protection of the Indian workers in Kuwait- a starving humanity," read the PIL.
It added that the life of these workers has become a story of weal and woe and that their condition in Kuwait is beggars’ descriptions.
"They are eking out their existence on the help of food given to them by some Gurudwaras and also by philanthropic institutions," said the PIL, claiming the workers' passports have been seized by the authority of the company and they have been further directed to make payment as fines for their
overstay in the country.
Comments
0 comment