Investigate the functioning of Indian High Commission/Consulates in UK

It is a sad fact that many Indians including Malayalees who have had the ill fortune to use the Indian High Commission London and Consulates in Birmingham and Edinburgh are left disappointed and filled with hatred to the nation as a whole.

The whole atmosphere of these offices is none less than a typical bureaucratic office in India. The phones are never answered, the staff members are known to misbehave, using abusive language and even throw applications at the customers and customers are often left at dark without knowing what happened to their applications or whom to contact for a remedy. Anyone visited at HCI/ CGI will have a trail of story about the services they have received form HCI/ CGI. So many complaints made directly and through other mediums for the past several years about the HCI's inefficiency, arrogance and ignorance towards Malayalees also.

It is painful and humiliating to note that our Indian embassies are disappointing Indians in the UK who, at some stage or other need to approach the embassy. Numerous complaints affecting people’s lives have come to attention. Many lost their passports, applications missing, complaints unanswered, months and years of waiting for a response to name a few. The authorities still not taking any measures for to prevent these incidents from occurring again.

Indians in the UK are impressed by the systematic and friendly service from the British offices and hope that our offices and staff will also once provide a similar professional service to its customers. Many of the Indians who hold indefinite leave to remain in the UK, but remained Indian citizens are fed up of the bitter inhumane experiences from the Indian High commission/Consulates and are changing their citizenship to that of British just to escape these situations.

Every Consulates functioning in a foreign land is a representative of the nation as a whole and is meant to be a resort to its nationals. As such, to be avoided or disliked by its own nationals is a serious aspect and a strong intervention is highly required to identify and rectify the errors and to uphold the prestige of our nation.

The staff in these embassies require a proper training and code of conduct and the rules and procedures need to be transparent, easily accessible and user friendly.