Migrants traveling from Nepal to work in the Gulf States, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, not only face hardships once they arrive, but financial exploitation before they board the plane says new research.
The report ‘Migration from the margins’ from the Overseas Development
Institute (ODI) – Britain’s top international development think tank –
says people in the Western Nepal district of Rolpa borrow the equivalent of one
year’s entire household expenditure on food, housing, clothing, education and
healthcare (around US$1265) to hire middlemen in a notoriously under regulated
system.
In Rolpa – a once war-torn, remote area of Nepal with high levels of poverty –
there are limited employment opportunities beyond farming, but with fees for
migration totalling up to $2500 per person, the poorest households cannot
afford to send family members to work abroad.
“Migrants have no option but to pay an agent to arrange passports, tickets and
visas, but their lack of familiarity with the rules, combined with the
desperation to find well-paid work, makes them highly exploitable to these
migration middlemen,” said ODI researcher and report author Jessica
Hagen-Zanker.
People usually take informal loans for migration from neighbours or
community-based lenders; an amount that can take years and years to pay back
says the report.
Having handed the money over, migrants are kept in the dark and have no idea
what to expect. “Agents have been known to withhold basic information about
contracts for months on end, sometimes only telling migrants when and where
they are going less than 24 hours before they board the plane,” said Ms
Hagen-Zanker.
Migrants told researchers:
· “People here are cheated before they leave Nepal. They don’t know about the cost of a passport, so will be cheated by the agents. If I pay 80,000 rupees (approximately US$800) to the agent, [out of this] we might have to pay 20,000 for the ticket and the agent will devour 60,000 rupees”.
· “[the contract] was written in English. There would be no chance to seek help from people who know English because we would be in hurry as I was given the passport and other documents four hours before the flight.
An investment in local employment
opportunities and stricter enforcement of existing regulation surrounding migration
are necessary to improve the situation for workers from Rolpa says the report.
Remittances
contributed 14.9% of GDP in 2006 rising to 22.1% in 2013. More than 1700
Nepalese people – 97% men – migrate out of the country every day, with 48% heading to the Gulf States.
In 2011, 10.5% of Rolpa’s population went
abroad for foreign employment (equivalent to 22, 450 people).
This research was conducted by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium
(SLRC), a six year global research programme, led by ODI. SLRC’s research partner is the Nepal Center
for Contemporary Research (NCCR).
- ENDS -
To read the report or interview its author, please contact ODI’s media officer Clare Price on +44 (0)7808 791 265 or email [email protected]