Close on the heels of the announcement by the State’s leading business house that it was pulling out of
the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Government of Kerala to set up industrial units which would have created more than 35,000 jobs, a more shocking disclosure has been made by the department in charge of expatriates.
More than 1.5 million Keralaites have returned to their home state from West Asian countries following Covid-19 and large scale retrenchment and localization since March 2020, according to Salin Mankuzhi, spokesman of Non Resident Keralites Association, a joint venture service by Government of Kerala and major entrepreneurs from the State who have made it in West Asia. The NORKA is also into manpower placement services in various countries abroad.
The army of unemployed people in the State has shot past the 6 million mark with the influx of people from Gulf countries who lost their livelihoods. “Kerala is in for major crisis and the State and Central Governments should initiate moves to address this burning issue,” said Attakkoya Pallikkandi, one of the early Keralites who settled in Dubai and returned to his roots after nearly five decades.
He said the budget proposals by the State Government for the year 2021 to 2022 is silent about any moves to rehabilitate and resettle the Gulf returnees whose remittances had sustained the development process of Kerala.
Attakkoya had reached Dubai in early 1970 and worked there for more than four decades as a journalist. “When I reached Dubai for the first time, a four storied building was the tallest structure in that Kingdom. There were no state-of-the-art roads in the oil kingdom. Though Dubai and other emirates made giant strides in the succeeding years, all has come to a stop and job opportunities have dried up,” he told The Pioneer.
The post-retirement days of Attakkoya are busy helping hundreds of Gulf returnees from Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasaragod districts to relaunch a new life in Kerala. “These returnees sent all their income to their houses and now they are left in the lurch without any source of income,” said Attakoya.
Sukumaran Periyachoor, a retired Government Higher Secondary School teacher says that it was doubtful whether those who lost their employment in West Asia wouild be able to go back. “This threat has been there for more than 20 years. We all knew that the Guld dreams would turn into a nightmare and it has become a reality,” said Sukumaran.
The man power recruitment agency under NORKA that used to send thousands of youth to West Asia wears an empty look. “Demand for manpower has come down drastically from the emirates and other countries. We have not sent more than a hundred para medical staff during the last one year,” said Mankuzhi. The Kerala Government has no concrete plans to rehabilitate those returning from West Asia, said Aattakoya.
According to Rajesh Narayanan, corporate head of an engineering and IT company based in UAE, it would take decades for the desert nations to return to normalcy. “Situation is bad not only for big time enterprises but even for micro and medium units. The eternally vibrant West Asia has gone sleeping,” said Narayanan.
P Rajeev, the young industries minister of the State, reacting to the announcement by Sabu Jacob that his group KITEX was withdrawing from the MoU signed with the Kerala government, asked industrialists and media not to do anything which would tarnish the Government’s image.