In a massive screening exercise of Chinese working on Indian projects, the government has identified close to 25,000 such workers who are on business visas but have been doing unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. A deadline of September 30 has been set for these workers to either return or apply for a legitimate employment visa.

To avoid further confusion in future, the Home Ministry, in a meeting with industry representatives, made it clear that no Indian company has the right to enter into an obligation in a contract with a Chinese company for bringing labour from there. The government is of the view that this involves sovereign issues and no entity, private or public, can insert this on its own in a commercial contract.

As a result, Chinese companies are now complaining because labour was one key advantageous segment for them in every bid and allowed them to offer lower costs compared to competitors. While this has created a fair amount of resentment in Beijing, sources said, the fact remains that even China does not allow all types of foreign labour to be employed in its country.

It all started when a camp of some 600 Chinese labourers landed up in a fight with local villagers at a steel plant site near Bokaro in May, which almost got riotous and police had to be deployed in large numbers to control the situation. Both sides ended up filing complaints with the police and in the investigations that followed, it turned out that the Chinese people had business visas even though they were performing semi-skilled and unskilled jobs.

... contd.