Sunday, Jul 23, 2017

Dubai: The Indian community in the UAE now stands to get more benefits from a community welfare fund after their government expanded its scope.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, approved the revision of guidelines of the Indian Community Welfare Fund (ICWF) that aids overseas Indians in distress, the Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul told Gulf News on Sunday.

Set up in 2009 to assist overseas Indians in times of distress and emergency in the most deserving cases on a “means tested basis,” the ICWF will now cover “community welfare activities and improvement of consular services.”

The expanded scope of the fund is also expected to offer greater flexibility in swiftly addressing requests for assistance by overseas Indians.

Until now, the scope of ICWF was restricted to assisting distressed Indians in cases like repatriation of distressed workers and housemaids, sending back mortal remains, aiding workers who get stuck in the UAE for their daily needs, and providing initial legal counselling in deserving cases. In the UAE, it is also used for running the Indian Workers Resource Centre.

“The enhanced scope of the ICWF will strengthen the hands of Indian embassies and consulates to support the community further,” Vipul said.

Earlier, the missions had to refer back to the Ministry of External Affairs for utilising the fund for specific things.

The Consul General said the expanded scope of the fund would give more power to the missions in decision making according to the local needs.

“The missions will become much more active and authorised to do community welfare activities. Now, we may not have to seek the approval from the ministry for each and every thing.”

He said the Indian missions in the UAE are awaiting finer details about the clauses of the expanded scope of the fund.

The ICWF is primarily funded by levying service charges on various consular services rendered by Indian missions and posts abroad. Community members have also made donations to the fund.

Apart from assisting Indian nationals in distress abroad, ICWF has been a critical support in emergency evacuation of Indians in conflict zones in Libya, Iraq, Yemen, South Sudan and other challenging situations like assistance extended to undocumented Indian workers in Saudi Arabia during the Nitaqat drive in 2013 and the ongoing amnesty drive in 2017. The Indian government had allocated a portion of the ICWF fund from the UAE for some of these missions.

In 2012, the then Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi had also allowed the Indian missions in the UAE to utilise the excess amount available with the ICWF for setting up a crematorium and two community centres in the UAE.

That followed a special request from the then Indian Ambassador to the UAE, M.K. Lokesh, because the Indian missions here had a surplus fund and had only utilised Dh4.95m out of Dh15.35m collected under the ICWF those days.

The latest status of the fund in the UAE was not immediately available.

by Sajila Saseendran Senior Reporter

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