Manikantan A P (centre), President the Indian Cultural Centre, and other officials during the press conference yesterday. Pic: Abdul Basit / The Peninsula
Doha: Indian Cultural Centre (ICC), working under the aegis of the Embassy of India, has announced to launch a pilot project in August to help provide life insurance at a very affordable premium to its members in collaboration with local insurance companies.
“The project is part of a crucial plan of ICC under which its members will get a slew of privileges like life insurance, special discounts at many commercial outlets and opportunities to get jobs and join educational and entertainment clubs,” said Manikantan A P, President of ICC.
The President of ICC, which has about 2,400 members, was speaking at a press conference held at the headquarters of ICC yesterday.
“We are going to introduce a group life insurance policy which is expected to launch in August. Now we are negotiating with different insurance companies operating in Qatar. The premium of life insurance for two years will be about QR100,” said Manikantan. He said that the premium amount will go down further if the number of policy holders reach to a certain level. “The family of policy holder will get QR100,000 if he/she passes away in Qatar or abroad during the period of insurance coverage,” said Manikantan adding that the policy is renewable for same period against same amount.
He said that under the privilege of discount, ICC is approaching different commercial outlets including restaurants, textiles, insurance companies and car shops to give some discount to the members of ICC.
Speaking about the membership fees of ICC, Manikantan said that members of Indian expatriate community could obtain ICC membership against QR500 for life time and QR100 for a year.
He said that ICC is also working with over 90 organisations of Indian expatriate community associated to ICC which have about 100,000 members to prepare a mechanism so their members could also avail same privileges.
“ICC has also planned to launch its website on June 25 which will allow Indian expatriate community to upload their CVs and apply online for ICC membership among many more features,” said Manikantan.
He said that the system will allow only Indian nationals holding Qatari residency and those visiting the country to access the website through their residency permit or visa numbers to avoid applications from abroad by recruitment agencies and individuals.
“We are approaching the management of local companies mainly Indian to give preference to the candidates who have uploaded their CVs on the ICC portal,” said Manikantan.
Speaking about educational and entertainment programs, he said that ICC began a cultural programme two weeks ago. “The programme which is being held on every Wednesday from 7:30 to 8:30 at the premises of ICC provides great opportunity to over 90 ICC’s associated organizations and over a dozen Indian schools to perform,” said Manikantan.
