The Ministry of Labour & Employment & Training has issued revised guidelines Vide notification no. DGE&T-M-26025/4/2009-MP (G) dated December 22, 2009 regarding eligibility criteria in respect of issuance of Employment Visas (EV) to foreign nationals coming to India for execution of projects in India.
The key features of the guidelines are as under:
- Maximum ceiling of issuance of EV to foreign nationals may be limited to 1 per cent of total number of workers working on a project with a minimum of 5 and maximum of 20 for all sectors, except Power and Steel.
- In case of Power and Steel sector, the maximum ceiling may be limited to 1 per cent of total workers or 40 whichever is higher.
- EV applications are allowed to be cleared by Indian missions outside India without referring the same to Ministry of Labour and Employment & Training, provided the following conditions are satisfied:
– Individuals are skilled and qualified professionals, technical experts, senior executives or in managerial positions, and
– These kinds of skills are not available in India.
- Indian missions will be required to immediately send details of EV issued for each project to the said Ministry to ensure that EV are not granted for skills already available in India and to keep track of the foreign nationals engaged on a project.
- The revised limits are permissible upto June 2010. This is due to the reason that the Indian companies need to train their local employees on the new technology so that after commissioning, the plans can be run by the local employees. Further, they can reduce dependency on the foreign nationals to execute the projects.
- For the purpose of training, it is recommended that Indian companies adopt an Indian Training Institutes (ITI) close to their plant. This will help train the trainees as per the requirements and to make them proficient.
- Only those proposals where the project are very big and exceed permissible limits shall be forwarded to Ministry of Labour and Employment & Training for their approval giving details, as prescribed. In such cases, any application with incomplete information/ details will be rejected.
Our Comments
The revised guidelines provide some relief to the Power and Steel sector by increasing the maximum limit for the total number of foreign nationals coming to India on employment visa to execute large projects in the said sector.
