Dubai : Indian job-seekers should not come to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on visit visas and must authenticate their employment offers and entry permit visas before heading to the country, the Indian Consulate in Dubai has said.

The advisory follows high numbers of calls and visits by Indian workers who have been duped by agents or employers on a regular basis, the Gulf News reported.

In an interview with the daily, Vipul, Consul-General of India in Dubai, said the mission does not have a precise data on the number of such calls “because most such calls are complex and raise a variety of issues”.

However, he said most calls about duping were related to workers who come for employment or searching for employment on visit visas.

“We have got several cases of people falling into trouble when they come for employment or for looking for employment on visit visas. There are also cases of women being forced to work as maids by dubious agents who get them to the UAE on visit visas as well as sending them to Oman and other countries,” Vipul told the daily.

When serious duping cases come to the notice of the Consulate, Vipul said the mission tries to mediate with the employers to get the passports of workers back and facilitate their return to India.

The Consulate issued 225 air tickets in 2016 and 186 in the first half of 2017 to stranded workers, the report said.

Indian missions in the UAE were also fighting duplicate and fake visas.

“In the first six months of this year, several hundreds of fake visas were detected. Typically, these get detected because many people ask us about the genuineness of a job offer and the UAE visa.”

Vipul said such cases are hard to detect in India.

“The workers would use the fake employment visas to board the flight from India and present their original visit visa on arrival here. When they gain entry, they realise that they don’t have the offered job.”

To tackle such visa frauds, the mission has issued an advisory to the Indian jobseekers, providing them useful links from the UAE government departments through which they can make preliminary verification of the authenticity of the employment offers and entry permits.

—IANS