New Delhi: Due to a reported slow down of the economy, job prospects in Gulf nations are decreasing. Indian families who had been living in Dubai earlier are now returning home due to changing work policies and rising prices there.

Those who had shifted to Dubai a decade ago now having difficulty to sustain their families as oil prices take a plunge in the international market. “Education here is expensive. I have two daughters and one of them goes to kindergarten now. My wife had a job too but since we had two children, juggling between work and family became challenging in the absence of a domestic help, which does not come cheap here unlike in India,” says Sahil, a retail employee from Aligarh who went to Dubai eight years ago.

Amir, who went to Dubai a decade ago, is now planning to return. “While our income has been fluctuating, our expenses are rising steadily. In Indian currency, my daughter’s school fees are close to Rs 2 lakh a quarter and now we have to pay taxes unlike before,” says Amir.

Kerala is a state, from where the largest number of workers migrate to Gulf in search of employment. Of an estimated 6 million migrated Indians, 2.5 million are from Kerala, mostly working in countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Last month, in Jeddah, nearly 4,000 Indian families did not get their children re-enrolled for the next academic year. In 2014, the number of Indian migrants fell from 2.4 million to 2.24 million. Work permit renewal fees and taxes in the Gulf are another cause of concern for Indians. Moreover, “nationalisation” policies now give preference to locals in recruitment in some industries.

TSG quotes a survey, saying: “In a 2018 study conducted by the United Nations (UN) and commissioned by Democrance, an insurance technology start-up revealed that job loss, and with it the worry of being unable to support families back home, were among the most frequently cited concerns by the study participants.”