Dubai: Poor Indians in a labour camp in Dubai can now stay in touch with their loved ones through a newly launched free e-mail service.

The facility was inaugurated by the Indian Consul General, George Joseph, as a gift to the people on the occasion of Kerala Day on November 1.

The labourers can now submit their letters to an e-mail facility set up at the camp by a team of entrepreneurs led by Prasant Gulati. The letters will then be scanned and sent to a dedicated e-mail box run in Kerala by the popular Malayalam daily 'Malayala Manorama'.

Manorama has taken up the responsibility of downloading and printing out the messages and sending them to their destinations after affixing postage.

The service is not restricted to Malayalees, others can also avail the facility.

A computer institute in Dubai run by NIIT, the leading computer training company in India, trained some of the 700 labourers of the camp how to scan and send the mail to Kerala.

The facility, in due course of time, may be extended to other camps for the benefit of a larger number of workers.

PTI