The Israeli government has sought to recruit 10,000 construction workers and 5,000 caregivers from India as part of an agreement between the two countries, the National Skill Development Corporation said on Tuesday.
They will be in addition to 10,000 Indians who have already been selected to work in the West Asian country.
This came amid reports of over 500 Indian workers being sent back from Israel after they were found to lack the requisite skills. They had been recruited to replace Palestinians whose work permits were cancelled after Israel’s war on Gaza began in October.
Tel Aviv has been seeking to replace around 90,000 Palestinians who became ineligible for work. In November, it signed a bilateral agreement with Delhi to conduct a recruitment drive.
The National Skill Development Corporation, a non-profit organisation established by India’s finance ministry in 2008, sent around 2,600 workers to the West Asian country in April under the agreement, according to The Indian Express.
Over 10,000 Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Telangana were selected as construction workers in the first round. The second round of recruitment is scheduled to take place in Maharashtra.
Israel’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority has put in a request for four types of jobs: frame work, iron bending, plastering and ceramic tiling. A team from the Israeli authority is scheduled to visit India next week.
Indian workers in Israel
The first batch of 64 construction workers from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh left for Israel on April 3.
More than four months later, the effort to replace Palestinian workers in Israel has faced challenges due to a “skill mismatch” and inadequate processes to assess Indian workers’ abilities, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.
The report quoted labour agencies as saying that between 500 to 600 workers had been sent back to India. It also quoted unidentified Israeli construction executives as saying that the Indian workers lacked experience.
“Through the G2G [government-to-government] bilateral route came very young Indians, many 20-year-olds who had never worked in construction,” The Indian Express quoted Eldad Nitzen, chairman of Israel’s Union Association of Foreign Employment Agencies in the Construction Industry as saying. “They came from jobs like farming and hair-cutting, some did not even know how to hold a hammer.”
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