It is unethical for civil servants to be absent from their posts for years and for them to curtail job opportunities for other Nepalis.

Last December, I was shopping in a grocery store in Calgary, Canada. An employee at the store, whose job was to talk to random shoppers inside the store and ask them to sign up for the store's credit card, approached me to see if I would sign up. I made an excuse and politely declined his offer. He looked at me for a few more seconds, and asked, "Nepali ho?"

He said his family owned a hugely popular restaurant in Kathmandu. His wife had applied for a Canadian PR, and he had to come to Canada because his wife was adamant. He said he wanted to go back to Kathmandu, even if his wife stayed in Canada. He would make occasional visits to Calgary, he said, to see his wife. I haven't seen him again in the store. I believe he is back in Kathmandu running his business.

The majority of Nepalis who come to Canada are not as well-off as the person I met in the store. Most who arrive through the Canadian government's PR program are "lecturers" who taught in Nepali universities and colleges. They have at least a Master's degree in their fields, while many also have PhDs. So they are highly qualified individuals in Nepal. The Canadian government invited them with hopes that they would fulfill the lecturer shortage in Canada. The expectation was that if they could not find work as a lecturer, they would train for proper accreditation and at least teach in high schools.

The reality is different. Most who arrive in Canada have years of lecturing experience in Nepal, and those experiences are honored here by Canadian colleges as well. However, they fail to meet the language requirements here due to poor English communication skills. As a result, most end up in menial jobs, such as security guards or warehouse workers. When I write this, I am not belittling those jobs. I am simply stating the fact that Nepalis here work in occupations that are different than the ones that the Canadian government brought them here for.

Even a menial job in Canada pays very well. If you have a stable job, banks lend you money to buy a house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Canada has an excellent education system, and schooling is free. When the children go to college, they get education loans from the government, a portion of which is waived after they complete their education. Healthcare (check-ups, doctor's visits, lab tests, etc.) is free and medicines are cheap through employer-provided health insurance. The environment is clean, public services are excellent, roads don't have potholes, tap water is drinkable, and there is no load-shedding. You can buy a used car with a month's salary, a gigantic flat-screen TV with two-weeks' salary, and petrol is cheaper than what it is in Nepal.

Therefore, there are many advantages when people move from Nepal to Canada, or to Australia or the US. And, nobody has the right to tell these people they cannot leave Nepal. A search for better life is why our ancestors moved from the savannahs of Africa to other parts of the world. Some of us ended up in Nepal. Moving from Nepal to other parts of the world does not make one a traitor. It is simply a continuation of the journey that our ancestors took seeking greener pastures.

However, Nepali migration is posing public policy problems. Civil servants continue to hold jobs back in Nepal while they live and work overseas. This has caused a backlash in Nepal, and rightly so. They earn a living overseas while also collecting salaries in Nepal. That is unethical. I know a few who have simply taken an unpaid extended leave from their jobs in Nepal. That is fine, if you intend to test the water overseas and wish to return soon if you find the overseas conditions difficult.

But I know of many Nepalis here who are on unpaid leaves back home, but they work full-time in Canada, have bought homes here, and appear to have happily settled permanently here with no intention of ever returning to their old jobs back in Nepal. Yet they refuse to vacate their posts back home. Some have only a year or two left until their 'retirement' in Nepal, and are simply counting down the days, hoping that Lal Babu Pandit does not succeed until they retire. Their hope is to collect Nepali pension, too.

Recently, I have read opinion pieces in Nepali publications from people who feel there is nothing wrong in a Nepali civil servant holding a foreign PR. They argue that Nepali civil servants will work in Nepal until they retire, and then use their PR to go to Canada, US or Australia to spend their post-retirement lives. People who make these arguments are missing an important piece of information. A PR is not something that you get once and retain forever. For example, a Canadian PR is valid for five years. It becomes invalid if you do not live in Canada for at least two years out of those five years. It means, if I have a Canadian PR and I am a current Nepali civil servant, I have to leave my job in Nepal for at least two years to come and live in Canada so that my PR is renewed for another five-year period. The rules are similar for an American or Australian PR.

The point is, if you have a PR from these countries, you have to leave your job in Nepal for a few years to go and live in those countries to renew your PR; which means you are leaving your posts in Nepal during those years. Whether you still get paid in Nepal or you are on an unpaid leave, you will be occupying important civil service posts in Nepal without actually working. That is a disservice to the Nepali state and its people.

We don't have a lot of respect for our politicians. That is why when somebody like Lal Babu comes along and shakes the establishment, it feels like a breath of fresh air. That is why we are genuinely surprised when we get somebody like Tek Bahadur Gurung, who refuses to back down in confrontation with foreign governments and wealthy manpower agents. If Lal Babu's claim of 10,000 civil servants with foreign PRs is correct, it means 10,000 civil servants in Nepal go missing for a few years regularly in order to renew their PR. That is not acceptable for a country that struggles to provide employment opportunities to hundreds of thousands of educated youths. Civil servants should not be absent from their posts for years, or curtail job opportunities for other Nepalis who remain in Nepal, or continue to collect salaries in two different countries at the same time. Doing so is unethical.

We do not begrudge them of their PRs. But they should stop being disgraceful and do the right thing.

The author is development professional who is pursuing a Master's in Public Policy at the University of Calgary

Published on: 18 July 2015 | Republica