The Indian Embassy in Riyadh has brought out a notification that it will issue at least 42,500 Emergency Certificates (ECs) for Indian nationals who have proposed to leave Saudi Arabia for home after the new labour policy came into force in the Kingdom.
The notification said that the embassy has so far received 42,500 valid applications for ECs. They include applications received directly at the embassy as well as from various collection centres throughout the Kingdom and from the Eastern Province. The first lot of applications received till the second week of May (from 1 to 12,000) had been verified by May 26. The verification of the second lot of applications (from 12,001 to 24,000) will be completed by June 2.
The verification process of the final set of applications (from 24,000 to 42,000) will be fast-tracked because of the increase in number of applications being filed and the fact that the three-month time given to complete the expatriation procedures is running out.
A meeting between India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud Al-Faisal was held recently at Jeddah. The meeting had also recommended ‘speeding up’ of the expatriation process. Based on the decisions taken during the last couple of weeks at official and ministerial levels, the embassy has made arrangements to start verification of the last batch of 22,500 applications on Saturday, June 1 and complete them by Thursday, June 6.
The embassy has also stated that delivery process of the ECs has been started, and dates for the delivery and mode of delivery will be announced shortly.
The schedule of verification for delivery and list of token numbers of EC applicants has been uploaded in the embassy website. The information is also available at the Embassy office in Riyadh and Consulate office in Jeddah. There was a heavy rush of applications for the release of emergency travel documents at the embassy, as post-Nitaqat, lots of Indian nationals are living amid concerns of possible job losses. The Nitaqat system makes it mandatory for local companies to hire one Saudi national for every 10 expatriate workers.