United Arab Emirates’ telecom service provider Du in collaboration with the Permanent Committee of Labor Affairs, Dubai have launched a mobile phone service designed to cater to the needs of large expatriate labour force consisting of Indians and other Asian nationalities in the country.

The service dubbed as ‘alo’, a ‘pay as you go’ mobile service specially tailored to fulfill communication needs of the expatriate segment, forms a part of a corporate social responsibility initiative from the operator.

“The ''alo' brand is designed keeping in mind the needs of the expat labour workforce primarily from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, China etc. who work for the construction companies here and live in labor camps,” Osman Sultan, chief executive of Du, said.

The new service ‘alo’ is accompanied by a multilingual user guide in the SIM pack and will be free of any joining fees and renewal fees, with the money being required to pay in easy monthly installments of 5 dirhams (Rs. 65).

Indians comprise of 42.5 percent of the country’s total labour force, out of which 65 percent belongs to the blue collar category.