No hike in wages of Indian workers, says envoy to UAE

Refuting a report published in a section of the media about a hike in wages of Indian workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council copuntries, Indian Ambassador to the UAE T.P. Seetharam said that no such revision in the minimum wages of Indian workers in this Gulf nation was made in the recent past.

A media report Monday had said: "Over the past seven months Indian diplomats in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have sharply increased the minimum salaries that they recommend for Indian workers at private and public firms in those states."

The report has also quoted the managing director of a recruitment agency in the UAE as saying that the minimum wage for Indian blue-collar workers rose to 1,500 dirhams ($409) in recent weeks from 1,200 dirhams last year,

"We had last revised minimum wages for various categories of Indian workers employed in the UAE March 15, 2011," Khaleej Times Tuesday quoted Seetharam as saying.

"What is happening obviously is that they might be enforcing these things now. The recruiting agencies have woken up to the fact that there is a minimum wage. So far, they might have been recruiting people without paying them the prescribed minimum wage," said the envoy.

He said the comments from the managing director of the agency quoted were false. "His allegation that it has gone up in the recent weeks shows that he doesn't know the facts. We have not made any changes in recent weeks as suggested in the story, which basically has a lot of inaccuracies."