Kerala has only 3 per cent of the country’s total population but the state accounts for 17 per cent of total foreign remittance. Picture for representational purposeIndia overtook China for the first time in the value of remittance from expatriates. Non-resident Indians sent home $100 billion (Rs 6.40 lakh crore) last year. Kerala is estimated to have received Rs 1 lakh crore in the same period.
Kerala has only 3 per cent of the country’s total population but the state accounts for 17 per cent of total foreign remittance. Kerala’s economy is supported by this contribution from expatriates. Facing crises in the agricultural and industrial sectors, the state is not able to create employment opportunities for the educated youth.
The recent nursing recruitment scam and the probe into it have worsened the situation. This has alarmed those who studied nursing and who have completed studies by mortgaging their houses and properties for bank loans. Not just nursing, all recruitments to foreign countries are in limbo in Kerala. Kerala would face an economic crisis if overseas employment opportunities are reduced.
Recruitment agencies are scared to come to Kerala. They have turned to the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia and Malaysia. India has tightened recruitment procedures by a set of rules including the mandatory registering of foreign agencies with the Indian embassies in the respective countries.
The government’s decision to monopolise overseas recruitment may be pleasing to many, but it is unlikely to be a success given the tough competition from private players in other countries and the avenues of visa approval.
Expatriates in the Gulf countries send their savings back home because they will not get citizenship in the host country. Meanwhile, those who go to the Western countries get citizenship there and send only a fraction of their earnings back home. So we have to encourage recruitment to the Gulf.
Taking a leaf out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s motto of Simplifying business, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy should adopt a policy of simplifying recruitment, given the pivotal position of foreign remittance in the Kerala economy. Representatives of all political parties and bureaucrats should foresee the danger of a possible end to foreign remittance. They should convince the Union Finance Ministry to let foreign recruitment agencies take the fees they receive in India to their homelands through banks as this is only about one-tenths of the total remittance in ten years.
The following guidelines could be considered to make foreign recruitment easy and transparent.
· Demanding recruitment fee should not be a crime. The offence is to receive fee and not fulfilling the promise of finding employment or ensuring the promised salary.
· Allow foreign recruitment agencies to operate in India with strict conditions.
· Cancel their licences if they fail to find employment or guarantee the promised pay. Make them pay back the fee with interest. Ensure maximum punishment.
· Allow only recognised agencies to recruit from the country.
· Allow foreign recruitment agencies to transfer the fee they get to their respective countries through banks.
· Make it mandatory for them to receive fee from candidates as cheque.
· Declare foreign recruitment as a forex-earning priority sector equivalent to export.
· Reward the agency which recruits the maximum number of Keralites to foreign countries.
· Treat as state guests foreign companies that come to Kerala.
· Withdraw the condition for recruitment agencies to register with Indian embassies as no other country has made it a requirement.
(The writer managing director of Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services and the former chairman of Confederation of Indian Industries Kerala unit.)
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