Last week, Nepalese Pradeep Raj Lamsal received a harsh message from the company he works for in Dubai: stay home for the next six months. This migrant, attracted like hundreds of thousands of his compatriots by the promise of a decent salary, now only thinks about returning to Nepal.
The return will be a major blow to the economy of the Himalayan country, which relies heavily on money sent home by workers like Lamsal, the sole wage earner in his family who used to send home $500 of the $750 he earned a month.
In 2019 alone, remittances amounted to $8.64 billion, which accounted for 27.3% of Nepal’s gross domestic product, according to data from the World Bank, which forecasts a 14% drop this year due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
PRECARITY WITHOUT A RETURN TICKET
For Lamsal, 30, from the Nepalese city of Kohalpur, the stay-at-home order was not the first, and came after the multinational he works for asked him in March to begin confinement at his residence without pay.
“I have filled out a document at the Nepalese embassy in the United Arab Emirates to return home, but so far nothing has happened. The officials have not responded,” the young man told Efe by telephone.
“I’m running out of money, it’s a big problem,” he lamented.
The United Arab Emirates, which is home to 224,905 Nepalese, called on the international community in mid-April, along with other Gulf countries, to repatriate their citizens in anticipation of a deep economic crisis due to the coronavirus.
For Nepalese stranded without work or money, there is no shortage of desire to return home, but restrictions are preventing them from doing so for the moment.
“We have decided to return to Nepal. I am waiting for the governments of Nepal and the United Arab Emirates to withdraw them so that we can travel by plane,” Narayan Bhandari, another Nepalese migrant who was fired by the taxi company he worked for at the end of March due to the coronavirus, told Efe.
Bhandari, with a wife and daughter, will return to Nepal empty-handed, having sold his land last year for about $2,500 to enable him to emigrate.
WAY BACK
According to a recent report by the International Labour Office (ILO), the pandemic could wipe out 25 million jobs worldwide.
This rise in unemployment is seen as a catastrophe in Nepal, with projections such as those of the International Monetary Fund, which predicts a contraction in 2020 in the Gulf countries, one of the main destinations for Nepalese in search of work.
“Hundreds of thousands are expected to lose their jobs and return home. This will undoubtedly affect remittances,” a spokesman for Nepal’s central bank, Gunakar Bhatta, told Efe.
Money flows from the United States, the European Union and other South Asian countries will also be affected.
No Nepalese have left the country for work since March 12, when Nepal cancelled all entry visas following the global coronavirus pandemic, despite official figures showing 1.5 million migrants in Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait alone.
This does not include the estimated three to four million Nepalese working in India, where they can travel without a visa.
“With lockdowns in place and businesses closed, most of these Nepalese are out of work and even when measures are relaxed, they are unlikely to find employment due to the global recession caused by the coronavirus,” Jeevan Baniya of the Nepalese think tank Social Science Baha told Efe.
Baniya stressed that the impact of the crisis is already visible among these millions of workers.
“Some employers have already started laying off workers, while others have asked them not to receive their salaries for a period of time,” he said.
OPPORTUNITY FOR NEPAL
Amid the prevailing pessimism, economist Rameshore Khanal told Efe that Nepal should see the crisis as an opportunity to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign countries.
“The government should introduce specific programmes to turn the coronavirus crisis into an opportunity to ensure that the country is self-sufficient in agricultural production,” Khanal said, adding that this would allow the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to “be mobilised in the agricultural sector, which is suffering from a shortage of labour.”
