MUMBAI: Mumbai police have arrested 30 men trying to fly to Kuwait on fake tickets and visas and are looking for the unlicensed recruitment agents who charged them 100,000 rupees ($1,500) to arrange their travel to jobs in the Gulf state.
The men from Uttar Pradesh state in northern India were arrested on Tuesday when they tried checking in at the airport with fake tickets, police said. The men have been charged with cheating and forgery and are being held in custody.
Lata Sirsat, senior inspector with the Mumbai police, said a police team was going to Uttar Pradesh to find the unauthorized recruitment agents who duped these men with fake documents.
“All the men are in their 30s and poor,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Indian officials are trying to crack down on unauthorized agents who promise to organize well paid jobs as cleaners and laborers in the Gulf states but cheat people along the way with complaints ranging from non-payment of wages to physical abuse.
Adverts asking workers seeking jobs overseas to only go through licensed agents are played on the radio daily.
Vivek Sharma, the protector of emigrants in Uttar Pradesh, said this case of fraud was rare.
“This fake ticket fraud and on such a scale involving 30 people is the first such instance that I have come across,” Sharma told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Uttar Pradesh is among the poorest states in India and poverty and lack of jobs force many to migrate to major cities such as Mumbai but campaigners said seeking jobs in the Gulf states is a new development.
“This trend started about two to three years ago and now most people going to the Gulf are from Uttar Pradesh. They are very poor people and in many cases their villages don’t even have roads,” said migrant rights activist Bhim Reddy.
Government figures show there are some six million Indian migrants in the six Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman.
($1 = 64.5850 Indian rupees)
India workers promised jobs in Kuwait arrested at airport with fake tickets
India workers promised jobs in Kuwait arrested at airport with fake tickets
France to vaccinate cattle for lumpy skin disease as farmers protest against cull
- The announcement comes after several outbreaks of the highly contagious disease prompted authorities to order the culling of entire herds
PARIS: France will vaccinate 1 million head of cattle in the coming weeks against lumpy skin disease, Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard said on Saturday, as protesting farmers blocked roads in opposition to the government’s large-scale culling policy.
The announcement comes after several outbreaks of the highly contagious disease prompted authorities to order the culling of entire herds, sparking demonstrations by farmers who consider the measure excessive.
Lumpy skin disease is a virus spread by insects that affects cattle and buffalo, causing blisters and reducing milk production. While not harmful to humans, it often results in trade restrictions and severe economic losses.
“We will vaccinate nearly one million animals in the coming weeks and protect farmers. I want to reiterate that the state will stand by affected farmers, their losses will be compensated as well as their operating losses,” Genevard told local radio network ICI.
France says that total culling of infected herds, alongside vaccination and movement restrictions, is necessary to contain the disease and allow cattle exports. If the disease continues to spread in livestock farms, it could kill “at the very least, 1.5 million cattle,” Genevard told Le Parisien daily in a previous interview.
A portion of the A64 motorway south of Toulouse remained blocked since Friday afternoon, with about 400 farmers and some 60 tractors still in place on Saturday morning, according to local media.
The government, backed by the main FNSEA farming union, maintains that total culling of infected herds is necessary to prevent the disease from spreading and triggering export bans that would devastate the sector.
But the Coordination Rurale, a rival union, opposes the systematic culling approach, calling instead for targeted measures and quarantine protocols.
“Vaccination will be mandatory because vaccination is protection against the disease,” Genevard said, adding that complete culling remains necessary in some cases because the disease can be asymptomatic and undetectable.
France detected 110 outbreaks across nine departments and culled about 3,000 animals, according to the agriculture ministry. It has paid nearly six million euros to farmers since the first outbreak on June 29.
