KATHMANDU, Nepal – Tourist visas are aimed for the people who wished to visit any place in other land in capacity as a tourist and for those who have the capacity to own that. But, recently, a new fact has been revealed that the traffickers are using the provision of tourist visa to traffic women to third countries via India.
The facts have been revealed during a seminar organized at Nepalgunj, a western city bordering India on the occasion of International Day of Migrants on Wednesday.
During the programme participants said the government is yet to take preventive measures though hundreds of women are trafficked to the Gulf countries via India.
“The women are barefoot and wear tattered clothes but possess tourist visas,” Keshab Koirala, coordinator of Maiti Nepal office in Nepalgunj was quoted as saying by a Kantipur daily, claiming that such visas are only used to send women abroad making it difficult to locate their whereabouts.
According to the authorities concerned, applications seeking the whereabouts of 416 women from the Mid-Western region sent to the Gulf countries were registered last year. Among them, only 23 have been rescued so far.
It is very difficult to search for the missing workers as the families do not keep the photocopies of the visas and passports, reported the daily as said by them.
As the border authorities do not keep tabs of people going to India or other third countries, the government does not have exact data of the women migrant workers going to the Gulf countries.
According to National Human Rights Commission human trafficking is going on unchecked under the pretext of foreign employment and that it was imperative for the government to keep tabs on people going abroad and reprimand the agencies sending people in the guise of tourist visas.
