New Delhi: Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan along with Union Minister of State Pratap Chandra Sarangi Wednesday greeted nine Odias who were repatriated from Sharjah, Dubai Tuesday.
Pradhan welcomed the labourers at his residence here and also thanked External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for early repatriation of the Odia labourers from Dubai.
“I got to know about the captivity of 10 Odias in Dubai through some TV channels. I urged the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to intervene in the matter. There are strict instructions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that such matters should be taken up prominently. External Affairs Minister intervened in the matter and helped in early repatriation. The good news is that before the Rath Yatra, our Odia brothers have arrived home,” said Dharmendra Pradhan.
As many as 10 people from Khurda, Nayagarh and Ganjam districts of Odisha had gone to Dubai in July 2018 to get jobs. The labourers said that they had been promised a good salary and other benefits but once they reached Dubai things changed and they were paid very less salary that too for only three months.
“I have paid `80,000 to the agent. He promised that we will be paid good salary and accommodation will be provided by the company. In the last three months we were not given enough food to eat.
We had to share a piece of bread among three people. We were also tortured by the employer. He didn’t pay us our salaries on time and after three months of joining the job, the company stopped paying us. We were sent there by a Khurda-based agent, Rahul Sahoo,” said Pankaj Sahdeb, who returned from Dubai. The labourers thanked Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan for helping them in their early repatriation. It is to be mentioned here that as many as nine workers from Odisha who were stranded in Sharjah, Dubai, returned to India, Tuesday, after the intervention of the Consulate General of India.
According to the Indian Consulate, nine workers have returned to India and one more person is on his way. The Consulate, along with the Odisha community, arranged air tickets for the workers. Earlier, Pradhan had written to Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and sought his intervention in the early repatriation of 10 Odias stranded in Dubai.
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