Trafficking of migrant workers is emerging as a trans-national crime with well-channelled international rackets exploiting legal loopholes and lack of proper coordination among concerned authorities, according to the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB).

The rise in trafficking of women in the guise of foreign employment in the Middle East over the past couple of years has prompted the CIB to take up the issue on a war footing, in coordination with other security agencies. But they are fighting an uphill battle.

“A large number of women migrant workers are being traded illegally to Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East using Delhi and Bombay airports as transit points,” said DIG Upendra Kanta Aryal at the CIB. “The well-connected network of traffickers both in countries of transit and final destination presents a big challenge.”

Making the authorities’ task much harder is the fact that fraudulent agents are investing a huge “setting fees” to facilitate their clients easy passage out of the country. And the tidy sum involved in this often tempts officials at the Department of Foreign Employment, TIA immigration to grease their palms, allowing those racketeers to take away the workers.

Aryal said those involved in human trafficking forge documents—fake citizenship certificates and passports. And dealings between the workers and outsourcing agents remain clandestine. “Even Indian and Bangladeshi nationals are found to be using the Nepali route and Nepali passports to go abroad,” he explained.

CIB investigations have found that many of those migrant workers, especially women, end up being tortured, and sometimes even suffer sexual exploitation at the hands of their employers. Without earning and insurance cover, they are left with no choice but to return carrying bitter memories. Some of them even commit suicide. While many are forced to run away from the torture of the employers and become stray.

Each month, Nepali missions abroad receive hundreds of cases of victimised migrant workers. Although the official data shows women making up only five percent of the total Nepali workers abroad, some unofficial data claim the figure at around 30 percent. 

But the number of those getting approval from the Department of Foreign Employment  (DoFE) for foreign jobs on presentation of fake documents and making their exits from the TIA is intriguing.

The extravagant and well-planned channel laid by racket on the support of some multiple stakeholders has kept police at bay from nabbing the criminal, says official.  

The CIB has detained 26 individuals for their involvement in human trafficking over the last one year. While a record at the immigration department shows 261 people were detained for forging passports, police have held more than 200 others on charges of forgery in the past two years.

  A few months ago, Delhi police arrested five Nepali women at the Indira Gandhi International Airport as they were travelling on forged Nepali passports. They were heading to Saudi Arabia.

Officials at the Nepali mission in India said forged documents like citizenship, passport, health certificate, labour stickers, and police reports essential to work abroad can be purchased from forgery experts, who charge between IRs 1,500 to 50,000.

DIG Narayan Bastakoti at the TIA accepted some official were found guilty in the past but denied involvement of police official. Some workers yet claimed they paid in the range of Rs 10,000 to 60,000 to TIA officials through a well-laid channel.

Director General at the DoFE Purna Chandra Bhattarai admitted the problem of women trafficking as a very serious.

“We have been coordinating with the police by providing them information. Since we don’t have a specified law to tackle trafficking, we let the police to handle such cases. Our law does not allow to imprison a person beyond seven years, whereas anti-trafficking law can punish a culprit up to 20 years. So we hand it over to the police,” he said.

Published on: 8 April 2012 | The Kathmandu Post