Nepali workers leaving the country for employment abroad continued to become victims of a tussle between the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority and the Department of Immigration today as well.

As many as 114 job aspirants were sent home from the airport after immigration officials said they “did not have proper documents” to go and work abroad.” Most of these migrant workers were heading towards Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, according to Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies President Bal Bahadur Tamang. 

“The workers were told they could not fly abroad, as some of the details on their visa documents, which were written in Arabic, were not translated into English,” Tamang said. Officials at the Department of Foreign Employment are responsible for translating visa documents. But since 17 of them, including the translators, were rounded up by the CIAA on Friday on charges of corruption, there is no one to do the translation at the department. 

“Despite this, the workers who were asked to go home from the airport were issued final approval to leave the country by the foreign employment department. So it does not make sense to prevent them from boarding the plane,” Tamang said. 

“This decision has inflicted great loss on manpower companies, as we had bought tickets for some workers from budget airlines and operators of budget airlines do not provide refunds if flights are missed,” Tamang added. Some of the workers were to fly on Air Arabia and Fly Dubai, budget airlines flying to Gulf destinations. 

The latest development comes a day after the immigration department prevented more than 150 workers from flying off to overseas job destinations. 

The immigration department started scrutinising workers leaving the country strictly yesterday to protest Friday’s rounding up of 18 of its officials by the CIAA. “We cannot comment on the functioning of the CIAA and the immigration department. But in this process innocent workers who are leaving the country due to lack of job opportunities here should not be punished,” Tamang said. 

“In this regard, we ask the immigration department, as well as the foreign employment department, to clearly tell us processes that have to be pursued so that job aspirants do not face hassles at the airport.”

CIAA Spokesperson Shreedhar Sapkota said the matter would be looked into. “Action will be taken if the ill intention is involved in preventing workers from going abroad,” Sapkota said. However, DoI Director-General did not receive calls from THT. He did not even reply to an SMS sent by this correspondent.

Published on: 26 August 2013 | The Himalayan Times