Punjab CM asks External Affairs to rescue women stranded in Muscat
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday appealed to Union External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to arrange to bring back 104 Indian women stranded in Muscat. Fourteen of them are from Punjab.
In a tweet, the Chief Minister said that he had ordered the ADGP, NRI affairs, to nab the agents who cheated them.
He also lauded the efforts of Dubai-based hotelier S.P.S. Oberoi, who has consistently helped Indians in distress abroad.
A video showing 89 Indian women, who have sought refuge at the Indian embassy in Muscat (Oman) after escaping from the clutches of their oppressive landlords, pleading for help had gone viral.
A majority of the women belong to Andhra Pradesh; 14 are from Punjab.
In the four-minute-long video, they narrated their ordeal of how they were duped by travel agents—first in India and then in Dubai.
They claimed that agents sent them to the UAE on a tourist visa with an assurance that their contacts in Dubai would help them get jobs as nurse and teacher.
Once in Dubai, they got trapped and forced to work as domestic help. They were again given a false assurance by Dubai agents that they would be provided with “decent jobs” in Muscat. Once there, they were sold off to rich landlords, who confiscated their passports and made them work for 18 hours a day, often beating them if they refuse to follow their orders.
On seeing the video, Dubai-based businessman Surinder Pal Singh Oberoi offered to help the beleaguered women. He agreed to pay their repatriation costs, which included air fare, and immigration and overstay fines.
