The Government has been receiving from time to time complaints/grievances from emigrants and their family members/relatives of being cheated by illegal agents. Such complaints are forwarded to concerned State Governments and Police authorities urging them to apprehend illegal agents and prosecute them on the basis of complaints. Wherever required such complaints are also referred to Missions/Posts abroad for providing relief/rescue.

 

As per the available records, the number of complaints against unregistered agents received and referred to the State Governments during the period of 2012 - 2016 is as under:

 

 

 

Government has also issued a Standard Operating Procedure on 26^th May, 2016, to be followed by States on receipt of complaints. The State Governments have also been requested to launch periodic visual and print media campaign creating awareness among people to use the services of Registered Recruiting Agencies, and not to go through Illegal agencies. 

 

 

            Government does not maintain data relating to Indian workers stranded overseas. However, as and when requests from Indian emigrants in distress, are received, the same are forwarded to the concerned Missions/Posts for providing relief and repatriation on an on-going basis. As per information available from Indian Missions & Posts abroad, 16,980 Indian nationals stranded in strife torn countries – Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Syria & Yemen sought government’s support for various reasons and 16,570 were brought back to India, during the last three years as under:

 

 

As a whole, besides the operation Maitri during the Nepal earthquake, the Government has rescued/brought back more than 80,000 Indian nationals during the last three year period from 2014-16.

 

This information was given by Shri Gen. (Dr.) V.K. Singh (Retd), the Minister of State for External Affairs, in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, today.

 

YSK

 

 

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