New Delhi, July 28 - The Indian government will soon send a semi-official team to Kuwait for talks with the authorities there for working out a regulatory system that ensures the well-being of the Indian expatriates, particularly housemaids, working in that country.

The discussions of the 'Community Welfare Team', comprising officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations, is expected to pave the way for lifting of the restrictions imposed by New Delhi in June last year, barring housemaids from going to Kuwait following complaints of ill-treatment.

But a senior official of the external affairs ministry said such complaints could not be generalized and noted that household workers still accounted for about 100,000 of the 280,000 Indian expatriates working in Kuwait.

He noted the number of Indian workers in Kuwait had in fact doubled from 140,000 since before the 1990 Gulf War. Kuwait had recently recruited 200 doctors and 12,000 nursing and Para-medical staff from India for working in the country's hospitals.

Both India and Kuwait are understood to be keen that the restrictions placed on housemaids going to the Gulf nation are lifted as early as possible, and Minister of State for External Affairs Ajit Kumar Panja had discussed this with the Kuwait authorities during his official visit to that country on July 8-16.

Unlike UAE, which had last year put a freeze on the issue of visas to unskilled workers from India and Pakistan on the ground that there was already a surplus of workers of this category in the country, Kuwait is keen to get workers from India, officials said.

India realizes that by continuing the restrictions, it would only be helping some other countries to meet the requirements and deprive an opportunity to thousands of its own workers to earn better income, officials say.

Officials also noted that the restrictions had not really helped stop Indian workers from going to Kuwait through third countries, which made them illegal immigrants and increased the prospects of their exploitation.

There are over three million Indian workers in the Gulf countries and they remit about $4.5 billion annually to their families back home.