Keerthi Prakasam | The News Minute | July 7, 2014 | 7:18 PM IST
“I worked in a prominent private hospital in Bilaspur and I started off with a salary of 4000 rupees. Three years and seven months later when I resigned, my pay was 7000 rupees. Can you blame us for going to Iraq to earn some money?” Remya, one among the many nurses who lost their livelihood due to the Iraq conflict, said bitterly.
"I knew Iraq is a dangerous and unpredictable country. But I chose to go there because recruitment there is a relatively cheaper process when compared to countries like Kuwait or Qatar."
Remya, who has a loan of Rs.3 lakhs back home, is currently stranded in Mumbai. The company she was working with in Iraq facilitated her return to Mumbai. But she and 17 others chose to stay in Mumbai with the hope that they could go back to Iraq.Now they dont have money to get them back to their homes in Kerala.
All the nurses who were "stranded" in Iraq ever since the sectarian violence broke out in mid-July have similar stories to tell.
For the armchair commentators, who brought up this question of why would anyone in the right bent of mind choose Iraq as a work destination, their stories of poor salaries in private hospitals in India is perhaps only one of the answers.
"My dream was to be self-sufficient and independent. My mother was a maid and her wages were barely enough to make ends meet. I took an eucational loan of Rs.3 lakhs to do my Nursing undergraduation. Now the interest has increased it to Rs.5 lakhs. I can never repay this loan with the salary I get in an Indian hospital," says Malligai (name changed), a nurse who was stuck in Tikrit.
In such circumstances, Iraq is certainly an easy choice to make for these nurses.
Jasminsha, President of the United Nurses Association in Kerala, says, “With such meagre pay in both government and private hospitals in India, how are nurses supposed to look after their families? Recruitment agents demand a fee of Rs.20 lakh rupees for jobs in some countries. So nurses choose Iraq where the lower recruitment fee is just about Rs.2 lakh."
Nurses working in many foreign countries get 40,000 rupees as starting salary. Added benefits were that the food and accommodation were completely free. Even if they paid 10,000 rupees as loan, their parents would still get around 30,000 rupees to run the family.
This is not the first time that such a crisis is hitting Indian migrant workers abroad. There was Arab Springs and then there was the Nitaqat programme in Saudi Arabia which was meant to promote local employment there and took its toll on illegal Indian migrant workers.
Every time a crisis breaks in a foreign nation, the Indian government has been scrambling to bring back its migrants.
But is this the solution? The larger picture of improving the local job market and thereby, providing opportunities to earn enough money to repay their debts and sustain their families, has sadly been missing.
While a vibrant job market in India is one side of the debate, exploitation and abuse of Indian Migrants in foreign countries is another. State governments which send the highest migrant populations to the Gulf, do little to promote safe migration and to put an end to fraudulent recruitment agents.