The number of women workers from South India going abroad, especially to countries in the Persian Gulf for want of jobs, has been steadily increasing in the last five years, according to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.
In 2008, 519 women got their clearance from Protector of Emigrants (PoE) office, Chennai, which monitors the below matriculation qualified workers from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Puducherry.
It said 957 women got clearance in 2009 and another 1,363 women in 2010, adding that the numbers further went up in 2011 with 1,981 women leaving the country abroad for jobs.
In 2012, though only 1,534 women went abroad, it is not considered less, since the total number of persons leaving the country itself was low, a Ministry official said.
A total of 490 women have left for the Gulf this year alone till June this year.
"The increase of women going abroad only means that women are choosing the legal channels of getting a job. Earlier, there were illegal ways of agents recruiting them and they would sometimes be cheated after reaching there.
"Following the awareness campaigns we have been organising in all these states women are now aware that they need to register and go through the POE channel for their jobs," Protector of Emigrants (PoE) Chennai D Jai Sankar told PTI.
POE Office gives workers below the qualification of matriculation an 'Emigration Check Required (ECR)' stamp on the candidates' passports, facilitating their travel abroad, after checking the authenticity of job agents, who have landed them jobs abroad.
