“Qatar deserves the best”. That is the slogan on boundary boards along important roads in and around Doha, the capital, with a population of 1.7 million. It ranks as the world’s richest country per capita thanks to its natural gas reserves, the third largest in the world. The country is preparing for the 2022 FIFA […]
Malaysian authorities are found to have been violating their own law in not allowing migrant workers any trade union membership. Although the Malaysian Employment Act, 1955 guarantees all workers, including migrant workers, the right to join a trade union, immigration authorities and local employers are systematically preventing the migrant workers from being a part of […]
Bipul Dangi (name changed) of Rolpa district landed in Malaysia earlier this month to work at Samsung company. But the promise that a manpower agency in Kathmandu made to him was broken once he got there. His salary was not as promised either. When he refused to work at a construction company instead and asked […]
A migrant worker walking out of the arrivals terminal at the Tribhuvan International Airport is instantly recognizable. He has many large suitcases tightly tied with strings as if each suitcase were a salmon fish in a net. The sight of the strings around the suitcase gave rise to the widely-used moniker dori lahure (dori: a […]
It’s shocking to learn that an estimated 6,000 people from Bangladesh and Myanmar are fighting for survival in the Andaman Sea and the Straits of Malacca as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are refusing to accept them to their respective shores. While Myanmar disowns the Rohingya people drifting in the sea amid total uncertainty, Bangladesh seems […]
“…but I’d paid for and been assured of an automobile driver’s job,” Maqbool protested when the employer (kafeel) in Abu Dhabi the poor Pakistani chap had reached, told him that he would be driving a herd of sheep and not a vehicle. “I couldn’t turn round and go home as the employer wouldn’t hand over […]
The river Yamuna is choked with all kinds of filth- plastic water bottles, poly bags, rubber, flower garlands and coconuts thrown during the Hindu death rituals. This waste, however, is the source of livelihood for some people living at Yamuna Nagar near Nigambodh Ghat. They row boats throughout the day and sieve all possible waste […]
Migration management is in the spotlight; 1.8 million Sri Lankans are currently working abroad, vast majority, women; “Action Plan” on the return and reintegration of migrant workers; Bilateral agreement ensures a standard contract. With a boom in the construction industry in the Middle East since 2012, Sri Lanka appears to have changed its migration trend- […]
In an exclusive interview, Francois Crépeau, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants and a Professor at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, Montréal, where he holds the Hans and Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, noted with concern that there had been a trend among ethnic minorities of taking […]