More than 10,000 Indian workers in Saudi Arabia are facing severe food shortages owing to financial hardship after losing their jobs, India's foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said late Saturday night.
India's missions in Saudi Arabia were providing emergency food rations and other assistance to workers stranded in five camps after their companies either shut down or employers abandoned them.
The swift government response to the humanitarian crisis came after a distressed man at a camp in Jeddah sent a direct appeal for help to Swaraj through Twitter.
“The number of Indian workers facing food crisis in Saudi Arabia is over 10,000. It is not 800 as is being reported,” Swaraj said in a series of tweets.
Swaraj also appealed to the roughly 3 million Indians in the nation to help their “fellow brothers and sisters”.
The Indian embassy in Riyadh was ordered to provide free rations, and junior foreign ministers VK Singh and MJ Akbar will travel to the region to provide help and take up the matter with local authorities.
Swaraj said a large number of Indians had lost their jobs in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and that their employers had not paid wages or closed down their factories.
Indian missions in Saudi Arabia and the Indian community in Jeddah had so far distributed 15,475 kilogrammes of food and other items, Indian officials said.
