Nearly 6,000 undocumented Nepali workers in Malaysia opt for amnesty to go home On 31 December Malaysia’s amnesty program for migrant workers called ‘Back for Good’ (B4G) came to an end. By paying RM700 ($170) and tickets back home, the scheme gave undocumented migrant workers an opportunity to return home without facing the penalty of […]
Migrants get mixed messages in Nepal’s promise of zero-cost recruitment Nepal’s overseas migrant workers bear high recruitment costs. A 2016 survey by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) shows that average recruitment costs to the Gulf ranged from $1,083 to $1,172, while workers going to Malaysia had to pay $1,388. Compare this to their average monthly salary […]
Nepal is not just exporting manpower to Qatar now, but also veggies There is something inherently elitist about labels like ‘expat’ and ‘diaspora’. They refer to skilled Nepalis studying, working or living abroad and not to the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers when, in fact, both are just individuals moving out for better opportunities. […]
The road to the Global Compact on Migration in Marrakesh this week has not been smooth in a politically tense global environment as an anti-migration wave is fuelled by nationalism and xenophobia. On Monday, the United States, Australia, Hungary and some other eastern European states said they would not participate in the Compact. While the adoption […]
In a world where populist anti-immigrant narratives dominate, the diverse composition of football teams in the World Cup in Russia did not go unnoticed. Players of foreign origin including former refugees and children or grandchildren of immigrants, especially in the winning French team, stole the show. In Doha, Nepali workers busy building the infrastructure for […]
Female domestic workers in Lebanon cannot visit families back in Nepal because of a travel ban that prevents them from returning to well-paying jobs. Along with horror stories of abuse of female domestic workers, housemaids from Nepal here have a different worry – they cannot go back home for holidays because a Nepal government ban on female migrant […]
The Kotaraya quarter of the Malaysian capital comes alive on Sundays when Nepali migrant workers gather here to celebrate their hard-earned day off. The neighbourhood has over 65 Nepali restaurants, shops, remittance and travel agencies selling airline tickets catering to the Nepali diaspora population. A lot has been said about Nepali migrant workers propping up […]
Barring Nepali women from working as housemaids in the Gulf is both unenforceable and harmful After high profile cases of abuse of Nepali domestics, the government has banned women from migrating for domestic work since early 2017. But outlawing it has driven recruitment underground, increasing the exploitation and risk for Nepali women. Women are still […]
I’ll call him Kasendra. He is sitting next to me in a packed, sweaty room at the Kathmandu Airport, in one of those uncomfortable iron seats mounted on metal bars. He is clutching a transparent light blue plastic folio and reading the contents within, without taking the documents out. The documents are from a manpower agency in Kathmandu and […]
Nepali migrant workers are trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and exploitation due to a failure by authorities to crack down on recruitment firms that charge illegally high fees for jobs abroad, human rights group Amnesty International said on Monday. Wages sent back by an estimated four million Nepalis – mainly employed working in […]