Indian workers exploited in Arab countries: Al-Jazeera

(November 10, 2011) More than a million Indians live and work in the Gulf region. Many of them are exploited or forced to live in slave-like condition, undocumented. According to a recent report by Al-Jazeera, thousands of migrant workers have gone missing after their visas expired. Often, employers take away their passports in order to force them to work underground without an opportunity to go home and with the constant danger of being arrested by police. For the past 11 years, Rafeek Ravuther has directed and produced Pravasi Lokam or "Migrants World’, a weekly programme broadcast on Kairali TV, a Malayalam-language station based in Kerala, southern India. In it, he tells the story of the hardships Indian workers face in Arab countries. His programme also helps families find their missing relatives. For millions of migrants from Kerala working in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Oman, Pravasi Lokam has become a must-see programme. Most of its protagonists are men, husband and sons who simply go missing. Over the past 30 years, millions of Indian women have become “Gulf wives”, left to raise their children on their own. When things go wrong, these women have nowhere to turn and no safety net to fall back on. The programme has 17 representatives in the Gulf who can be contacted for help. Their phone numbers and contact details are scrolled across the screen as missing cases are reported. The programme has aired more than 1,300 cases since it began, but has only been able to reunite around 320 families.