Roshan Sedhai

At a programme organised by the National Institute of Development Studies some six weeks ago, Chief Secretary Lilamani Poudel acknowledged that the business of human traffickers, disguised as foreign employment agencies, amounts to Rs 40 billion annually. Pointing to a thin line between facilitating overseas employment and human trafficking, Poudel remarked that traffickers were exploiting the loopholes and negligence of the state mechanism.

The chief secretary’s remarks are acceptance of the bitter truth that Nepal has emerged as a transnational hub for human trafficking in the last few years. Human traffickers are shifting their interest from Indian brothels to the Middle East. Although males face labour exploitation and various types of discrimination, the targets of traffickers have primarily been female.

While official government data show the presence of around 58,000 women in the Gulf, unverified external reports, including a claim by the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA), state that the figure could be over 500,000. This claim, however high, is reinforced by the state’s conflicting acceptance that Saudi Arabia alone is home to over 70,000 Nepali women. Given the fact that Nepal has always had regulations in place barring Nepali women from migrating to Saudi Arabia, it is more than likely that these women were trafficked there. If claims from various NGOs and some manpower companies are to be believed, around 100 women are being trafficked every day to various countries via the practice of ‘setting’ at the Tribhuvan International Airport and various Indian airports.

There is no doubt that many of these women undergo physical, sexual and economic exploitation in a foreign country, especially those working in the domestic sector. There are hundreds of examples of women migrants returning home after falling victim to fraud, insanity, pregnancy, physical assault, rape and other kinds of exploitation. While the government has accepted that such exploitation does take place, it has made serious mistakes while taking steps to resolve the problem.

With its age bar on Nepali women migrating abroad for domestic work, the government seems to have overlooked serious factors like the rising unemployment rate, the growing strength and purchasing power of human traffickers, the open border with India, the absence of foreign missions in Nepal, along with the lack of memoranda of understanding and agency agreements with labour-receiving countries. By placing limits on the freedom of movement of women, stakeholders also inadvertently facilitated corrupt officials who help traffickers by issuing citizenship certificates to minors, smuggling girls through immigration and through the open border with India.

Meanwhile, the government has failed to acknowledge its own procedural lapse in monitoring dishonest manpower companies, agents, orientation centres, health institutions and training centres. Most importantly, stakeholders have even failed to raise grassroots level awareness about the hazards of illegal migration and provide alternative packages for women to work inside the country.

As the demand for female domestic workers in the Gulf is high, foreign employers spare no amount in recruitment. Agents based in Nepal make a net profit of over Rs 50,000 on each woman sent abroad. Informed sources say that most agents manage that profit despite bearing the costs of fake citizenship, passport, travel and air tickets. If they do not have to bribe government officials, then their profit is higher.

As Nepal has no labour laws with many foreign employment destinations, there is no system in place to look after the well-being of migrant workers. Hence, many workers face terrible conditions at their workplace. Employers often forcefully seize passports, bar them from going out and communicating with family members, do not provide proper food and accommodation and harass them in many different ways.

As the government is aware of these problems and the steps that it has taken to curb them have not worked, it would have been much more prudent for it to have opened the way for credible manpower companies to send female workers abroad. This would make it easier to hold agencies accountable if something goes wrong. In the long run, the government itself should start sending workers through state-to-state channels as practised by many other nations.

Current records with the Nepal Rastra Bank show that remittance from workers abroad contributes around 25 percent to the country’s gross domestic product. The latest World Bank report placed Nepal fourth on the list of remittance-receiving least developed countries in terms of its contribution to GDP. Despite the fact that the country relies so heavily on foreign employment, effective measures have not been taken to ensure the well-being of migrant workers. However, in the name of solutions, the government needs to conduct adequate homework before implementing new measures.

Published on: 26 February 2013 | The Kathmandu Post