KATHMANDU, Nepal-As many as 114 workers heading towards Gulf countries have been turned away from Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), Monday. The workers heading towards several gulf countries were brought back from airport stating that they did not have proper documents to go abroad.
Immigrant officials at TIA averted migrant workers who were leaving for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait among other countries suspecting them of carrying fake documents and reports prepared by officials at the the Department of Foreign Employment.
The latest development comes a day after the immigration department deprived more than 150 workers from flying off to overseas job destinations.
According to Bal Bahadur Tamang, president of Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, the workers were ordered not to fly abroad, as some of the details on their visa documents which were written in Arabic were not translated into English languages.
Earlier, the workers who were asked to go home from the airport were given green signal to leave the country by the foreign employment department.
Immigrant officials have also blamed foreign job aspirants of carrying fake documents after paying handsome amount of money to officials at the department.
In the meantime, man power agencies have protested the government’s decisions to withdraw the workers from the airport. Tamang said that the decision has brought down great loss on manpower companies as they had purchased tickets for some workers from budget airlines.
The immigration department started inspecting workers heading for oversea jobs stringently since Sunday to protest Friday’s rounding up of 18 of its officials by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), it is learnt. In the meantime, CIAA Spokesperson Shreedhar Sapkota warned that action will be taken if ill intention is involved in preventing workers from going abroad.
Government records show an estimated 2.5 million Nepalis, mostly youth, are working in the Gulf and East Asian countries. The remittance from the foreign employment sector remains major lifeblood for the country’s economy.
726 Nepali migrant workers died
In the meantime, a fresh report of the Foreign Employment Promotion Board (FEPB) revealed that at least 726 Nepali migrant workers have died in the East Asian and Gulf countries in the last year alone.
The death toll of foreign job seeker has increased by 80 this year compared to the last year’s statistics (643).
The report shows heart related ailments as the major killer, followed by traffic accidents, suicide, work place accidents, natural deaths and unidentified cause.
