Two Indians stranded at Dubai airport after being cheated by agents

Abu Dhabi: Yellu Dharma Reddy, a 38-year-old Indian, with his friend 39-year-old Bongu Mallaiah got stranded at the Dubai International Airport after they were reportedly cheated by unscrupulous visa agents who provided them with fake visas.
Hailing from a small township in Andhra Pradesh (India), both Reddy and Mallaiah, claim to have spent 140,000 Indian rupees each (about Dh14,000) after being promised a job in the UAE by a visa agent back home.
Narrating their plight, Reddy said, “We both are from the same village. Neither of us can read or write ... we both gave the money to the agent after he assured to get us jobs in Dubai as labourers.”
The agent with the help of his Dubai-based accomplice provided them with visit visas. “Once here, we met the agent here, but got no job. Eventually we were forced to do petty jobs illegally. At the end of two months, the agent said that our job visa is ready. He then asked us to go to Kish island so that we could come back on job visas and start working.”
The friends left to Kish but for days and months got no response from the agent, they say. “At Kish, life became hell for us. No food, no job, no way to go back home … we were cheated and left to rot. Luckily, the owner of a hotel asked us to work at the hotel to earn our food. For six months, this went on,” said Mallaiah.
Meanwhile, they kept calling the agent in Dubai. Finally, on December 23 they got another visa to Dubai. “We thought our bad days were going to end,” he said.
On January 4, Reddy and Mallaiah arrived in Dubai on a visa issued by a general trading company. However, they were detained at the immigration counter and were told that they were in possession of fake visas.
Once Gulf News alerted the Indian Embassy, the officials took immediate action by sending two officials from the Dubai Consulate to meet them and take an official complaint.B.S. Mubarak, the Consul for Labour Affairs and Welfare at the Consulate, said, “We have noted their grievances and collected the contact information to track the visa agent. For the time being they have been given some money for sustenance.”
10/01/08 Rayeesa Absal/GulfNews, United Arab Emirates

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Categories: Airports Jan 2008, Foreign Jan 2008