Rising unemployment in the country has forced Nepalis to join the foreign jobs in the last one decade as the Nepalis joining overseas jobs has increased six times in a decade.

According to Department of Foreign Employment, about 55,045 had joined foreign jobs in the fiscal year 2001-02, while migrant workers number jumped to 354,716 in 2010-11.

Current year seems to be more promising as about 109,554 job aspirants joined foreign jobs in the first three months. However, quality of workers and job destinations has not changed. Above 70 per cent of the Nepali migrant workers are still unskilled involved in 3D (Difficult, Dirty and Danger) works in Malaysia and Gulf countries – Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and others. More than two million documented Nepali workers are currently in those destinations. According to the department, four top destinations have hired 17.31 million workers in the last two decades and equal number of undocumented migrants are estimated to be in those destinations. Malaysia has hired the highest number of Nepali migrant workers (675,573) followed by Saudi Arabia (412,441); Qatar (384,714) and UAE (258,979) since the fiscal year 1994-95.

In the recent years, Qatar has toppled Malaysia in the most preferred destination list. Qatar has hired 36,385 Nepalis in the last three months of the current fiscal year compared to Malaysia that has hired only 23,503.

Other preferred destinations Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait hired 22,393, 16,616 and 5,138, respectively in the first three months of the current fiscal year. Despite the rise in the number of the migrations, workers contribution to nation building is limited. Huge sum of remittance is used in debt financing, bread and butter to family members and their children’s education.

Only 2.4 per cent of the total remittance is used in capital formation and 79 per cent of the total remittance is used in daily consumption and seven per cent is used in the loan repayment, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics report. “However, remittance has contributed in the poverty reduction.”

Published on: 31 October 2011 | The Himalayan Times