A 24-year-old Nepali man queues by the boarding gate at Tribhuvan
International Airport in Kathmandu. Along with his 30 kg suitcase, he
carries a much heavier load - a $1,700 loan to be paid back to the
recruitment agency, pending school fees for his children, promised gold
bangles for his wife and hospital expenses for his aging parents.
Doha,
Qatar, is going to be his big break, his chance to put an end to
generations of poverty his family has endured. Or so he thinks. Soon,
his hopes of realizing his dreams among the bright lights of the booming
foreign city are going to be replaced by the dark image of reality - a
dusty sheetless mattress in a stuffy overcrowded bedroom, a
cockroach-infested kitchen without clean drinking water, long hours of
unpaid work under a deadly 50-degree sun (122 degrees fahrenheit) and a
life of slavery. But he doesn't know that yet. The agency did not tell
him.
There are hundreds of others like him on the same queue, carrying
identical baggage, shiny green passports in hand. Every year, a
staggering 100,000 Nepali youth flock to Qatar
in search of a better life in the Arab nation. Many of them are tricked
by corrupt recruitment agencies that charge extremely high fees and
make false promises of a better future for the workers and their
families. In reality, most of these men and women are practically sold
to a kafeel, a sponsor, under the traditional kafala system
that binds workers to their employers. Their documents get confiscated;
they do not receive their wages for months; they are not allowed to
quit their jobs and are forced to live under appalling unhygienic
conditions. If they so much as ask for their wages, they risk getting
thrown into jail. Ultimately, these men and women end up being trapped
in a life of slavery miles away from home, with no means of escape.
Some do get to return home - in coffins. Four hundred Nepali workers
have died since the preparation for World Cup 2022 in Qatar started in
2010, with nearly 200 killed in
the past year alone. Every day, 3 to 4 bodies of Nepali workers arrive
at the Tribhuvan International Airport from the Middle East. While
suspicious medical reports show heart failure or stroke as the cause of
death, it is the substandard working conditions and the monstrous
treatment of the workers by their employers that account for the
overwhelming number of lost lives.
While the 2022 World Cup and cries from international human rights
organizations have drawn international attention to the abuse of workers
in Qatar, queues continue to get longer at TIA's departure gates. Nepal
does not need international sympathy right now. What it needs is to get
the true picture of Qatar across to its poverty-stricken villages, and
discourage its impoverished youth from leaving home to become slaves
overseas. Until the issue gets resolved - and it is going to take years -
Nepal needs to stop its men and women from taking that suicide plane to
Doha.
by Sadichchha Pokharel from here
See an earlier post re statements made to improve conditions for immigrant workers in Qatar here
1 comment:
More than 90% of deaths of Nepalese migrant workers should be treated as murder, a senior government official has said.
Krishna Hari Pushkar, director-general of the department of foreign employment in Nepal, said only a fraction of the rising numbers of migrant deaths overseas could be classified as natural. "These days, we have changed our perspective. Whenever we receive a report of a death, we will not simply accept it as a natural death," he said. "Unless the employer can prove it's a natural death, we will file a case against them on the charge of murder."
Pushkar's comments follow an extensive assessment of the causes of migrant deaths, during which government officials visited major destination countries to study death records and interview employers and staff.
"Workers, especially construction workers, are under a lot of stress. This can lead to death from a brain haemorrhage or cardiac arrest," Pushkar said. "The employers call this a natural death, but when we talked to [the deceased worker's] colleagues, they said they were forced to work beyond their capacity to meet their employer's targets."
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/may/20/nepal-migrant-deaths-treated-murder
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