Roshan Sedhai

Nepali embassies in Gulf countries are flooded with applications from migrant workers requesting replacement of their handwritten passports with machine readable ones.

As per the deadline set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the government will have to phase out the handwritten documents by November 15, 2015.

The number of those seeking machine readable passports (MRP) in Saudi Arabia, for instance, is increasing by the month. According to the embassy, it issued 1,004 MRPs and 44 temporary passports in the past one month, while the number was 564 and 30 just a month before that. The embassy had issued only 31 MRPs and 21 temporary passports six months ago.

Nepali Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Udaya Raj Pandey said the number is likely to see a significant rise in the upcoming months considering the fact that a majority of the workers possess the handwritten documents.

Embassies in countries like Malaysia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait are also witnessing a significant rise in the number of MRP seekers.

Despite the rising demand, the embassies are ill prepared when it comes to coping with the rising demand due to an acute shortage of equipment and human resources.

Apart from some labour attachés and local staffers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has deputed only 28 staffers in total in its missions in five countries—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and Malaysia. These five labour destinations are host to over 90 percent of the 2.5 million Nepali migrant workers. In Qatar, the condition is so bad that migrant workers and Non Resident Nepalis have been providing financial support to the Nepali Embassy to hire additional staffers, officials said.

Besides having to tackle unforeseen circumstances, all the embassies have to deal with a wide range of issues, including visa issuance, demand attestation, legal assistance and sending back home dead bodies.

Officials in the embassies in question have been constantly alerting MoFA officials, including the minister, that they are likely to face further chaos if the problem is not handled properly. MoFA spokesperson Arjun Bahadur Thapa said the ministry understands the problem, but added that it is not in a position to address the demands of the missions.

“There is manpower crunch in the ministry itself. Deploying additional staffers (in the embassies) will be a very costly affair for the government,” said Thapa. “Local people with language and technical skills can be more effective than our staffers or labour attachés,” he said.

The discrepancy between the overwhelming demand and insufficient manpower has hampered MoFA services. It takes around two months for migrant workers to receive a passport from the embassy, while the understaffed ministry also takes almost two months to issue one.

Published on: 13 May 2013 | The Kathmandu Post