Israel Announces Arrival of 6,000 Construction Workers From India During April-May 2024

New Delhi: As unemployment hits at a four-decade high in India, around 6,000 workers are being sent to Israel in April-May 2024 to work in the construction sector amid a raging war in the region and shortage of workers there.

The workers from India are being sent to Israel under a government-to-government (G2G) agreement between the Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi governments, according to which 42,000 Indian workers will be sent to Israel to work in the construction and nursing sectors.

However, news agency PTI, said that Israeli Minister of Economy Nir Barkat, during his trip to India in April last year, had spoken to officials and his counterpart in Delhi, about bringing in almost 1,60,000 people from India.

Quoting a statement issued by Israel on Wednesday, April 10, by PTI said the Indian workers will be “brought to Israel on "air shuttle" following a joint decision by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), finance ministry and the construction and housing ministry on subsidising charter flights.”

The labour shortage in the Israeli construction sector is because the largest chunk of labour, about 80,000, came from the West Bank and about 17,000 from the Gaza Strip. Israel revoked the work permits of Palestinian workers, who constituted about 25% of the construction workforce of the Jewish state, leading to a significant slowdown in its industry, and is now looking to recruit workers from India, where unemployment is high and has become a poll issue in the ongoing general elections.

However, PTI, cited a source in the construction saying that “after three months, during which more than 20,000 workers from India and Sri Lanka were approved for jobs through screening tests conducted by the Israeli Contractors Association (ICA), only about 1,000 workers had arrived,” blaming the delay on "bureaucratic procedures”.

Most of the selected workers are said to have resigned from their jobs and are waiting to receive a visa to work in Israel, the sources told PTI.

‘Last week, the ICA had told PTI: "The task assigned to us by the government was carried out at a record pace. It has been weeks since we completed three rounds of selection of workers in which professional approval was given to employ more than 20,000 workers, half of them in the government track and half in the business track,” said the report.

In India, the Construction Workers Federation of India (CWFI) had objected to the Indian government’s move to “to put the lives of construction workers of our country at risk by sending them to Israel and making them indirect partners in its genocidal attacks on Palestinians.” 

According to reports in January this year, over 1,00,000 Palestinians had been killed, wounded or missing since the  conflict began on October 3, 2023.

In a statement, CWFI had called upon the Indian government to instead “use its diplomatic relations with Israel to abide by the UN resolution instead of negotiating for sending construction workers to that country.”