December 1, 2010
Thanks to foreign remittances, Nepal is one of the few countries that have not experienced an economic slowdown in the last several years. This is according to a just-released report prepared by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Remittance flow to Nepal is estimated to reach US$3.5 billion in 2010. Nepal received payments worth nearly US$3 billion in 2009.
Manohar Khanal, director at the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), said yesterday that the “current demand trend show there will be a sudden boost early next year.” Prior approvals had risen from 23,512 overseas jobs in mid-September to nearly 31,000 in mid-November. And Saudi Arabia has just decided to hire 100,000 Nepali workers over the next four months.
Currently, around 1.7 million Nepalis (out of a total population of 30 million) are working in overseas jobs. All of these laborers – most of them male -- send a large portion of their paychecks back home, which makes up 23 percent of Nepal’s gross domestic product. The DoFE can barely keep up with the paperwork: It is issuing approximately 1000 approvals each day.
Obviously, this has kept Nepal afloat – a country mired in a protracted political stalemate, dogged by the insecurity of foreign investors (particularly Indian entrepreneurs who have been waylaid by Maoist cadres), and shamed by the government’s inattention to generating domestic employment opportunities for its overwhelmingly youthful population.
But what is the real cost of relying on remittances to keep Nepal afloat?
Apart from the “brain-drain” issue, a phenomenon that has turned the youth into experts on how to escape from Nepal, there are social, cultural and moral questions to be considered as well.
Ganesh Gurung touched upon this in his current article “Lahure Workforce”, published in the 2010 December issue of Himal Southasian:
[Nepali] migration comes with a spectrum of social costs. Data from official sources shows that around 750 migrants died while abroad in 2007. In the absence of insurance schemes in such cases, there is little security for their families back home. Family problems are also rife, with divorce rates among migrant families reported to have increased. Nepal is currently experiencing an HIV epidemic, with prevalence of over five percent in certain high-risk groups; seasonal-labour migrants account for 40 percent of this population.
For many years there was no discrimination for Nepali women in foreign employment. But in 1997, Kathmandu moved to ban Nepali women from working in the Gulf in the aftermath of a controversial death. After a few years this ban was lifted, with conditions stipulating that Nepali women could only work in the formal sector, thus precluding them from work as maids in private homes. (In 2007, this ban was extended to Malaysia.) Nonetheless, Nepali women continue to work in largely unregulated areas throughout India, thus prompting many to see the ban as meaningless beyond increasing the cost of migration and degree of vulnerability for Nepali women abroad.
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So, during the next few months, while thousands of young Nepalis stand in line for the privilege of working in Saudi Arabia, an incident that occurred there earlier this year should be remembered.
In March, a group of 30 Nepalese workers went on strike in Riyadh because of unpaid salaries and alleged mistreatment at the hands of their sponsor.
The workers, brought there as cleaners by a private manpower supply company, demanded to be allowed to return to Nepal because their sponsor had been violating the terms of their contracts ever since they arrived in July 2009. The Nepalis were stationed as menial workers at King Abdulaziz International Airport.
Their biggest complaint was about the quality of their accommodation and the beatings by the sponsor and his staff.
They reported that for two months in the beginning they were made to sleep in the open on the terrace of an old building because over 200 workers were already staying there. Conditions barely improved later, physical abuse was common and paychecks were not forthcoming. The Nepali’s Saudi sponsor seemed to have disappeared after their protest became public.
Nepalis are rightfully thankful for remittances, but overseas jobs are not a permanent solution. Having a Nepali government that concentrates on social issues – such as law and order and job creation inside Nepal -- that’s where real healing will take place, not in the degrading living conditions of a Mid-Eastern labor camp.
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