Kathmandu, February 16:

The global economic crisis heightens the potential for social unrest back at home when thousands of Nepali migrant workers suddenly out of work return home and demand the government to take swift and decisive action.

“The flood of unemployed returning migrants could pose big challenges to social stability,” said Ganesh Gurung, a social scientist, adding, “Nepal may have social unrest, even if 10 per cent of the total 2.5 million migrant workers get laid off and return home.”

After work started drying up in Malaysia, Qatar and Dubai — key destinations of Nepali migrant workers — the government is also worried. It has asked its envoys

to the affected countries to get first-hand information. However, they seem to sound more optimistic that the crisis may not impact Nepali workers, more than 80 per cent of whom are

involved in the construction sector.

A six-year boom in Dubai that turned sand dunes into a glittering metropolis, creating the world’s tallest building, its biggest shopping mall and, some say, a shrine to unbridled capitalism, is grinding to a halt forcing Nepali construction workers to return home.

However, Arjun Bahadur Thapa, Nepal’s ambassador to the

United Arab Emirates (UAE), cited the UAE government’s stimulus package of over $40 billion — that is not related to job creation — and claimed that the construction sector was not panicking.

Still, the demand has been continuously dropping. In December 2008 the Nepali embassy in the UAE received a labour demand of 1,129 but in January the demand dropped to 813 proving Thapa wrong.

“In 2008, the demand for Nepali workers totalled 37,704 and in 2007 it was 35,131 — including construction sector, security and others,” Thapa said.

But Dubai, one of seven states that make up the UAE, is in crisis. The real estate bubble that propelled the frenetic expansion of Dubai on the back of borrowed cash and speculative investment has burst.

Half of all the UAE’s construction projects, totalling $582 billion, have either been put on hold or cancelled, leaving a trail of half-built towers on the outskirts of the city stretching into the desert.

Among the casualties is the tower Donald Trump promised would be the ultimate in luxury, a $100 billion resort complex by the beach, and four huge theme parks and an artificial island developed by the state company Nakheel.

The banks have stopped lending and the stock market has plunged by 70 per cent. “Perhaps those who suffer most are construction workers from the South Asian subcontinent, who have carried out perilous work on building sites earning as little as £70 a month,” according to a report.

Dubai, which has barely a trickle of oil in comparison, is projecting a 42 per cent increase in public spending on infrastructure projects, to compensate for vanishing private investment.

Low-paid Asian workers, including Nepalis who toil long days to build the skyscrapers of Dubai have become the latest victims of the global financial crisis as companies run short of business and money. For many years, the Gulf emirate was a magnet for South Asian workers who fed the booming economy with cheap manpower — from cleaners and gardeners to skilled and unskilled builders.

A report issued earlier this month showed that $582 billion worth of building projects in the UAE, of which Dubai is a part, had been put on hold due to the slowdown. That was 45 per cent of the total.

Six years of spectacular growth in the UAE construction sector, mainly in Dubai, absorbed hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly from South Asia. That had a knock-on effect, creating further opportunities for migrants. But the financial crisis, mainly in construction and related industries, is reversing that trend, forcing foreign workers to go home.

Even for labourers who were brought to the UAE on a work visa to satisfy the needs of the once-booming economy, many are receiving the pink slip. The companies told them not to come back until they called.

“The companies tell the workers that they do not have much work and that there is shortage of money,” Thapa said adding that In the past, workers were not taking vacations, even after four years of continuous work as there was a huge work load till the immediate past.

“It appears that some of the unpaid ‘vacations’ are simply a way of getting rid of people without having to pay them off,” the Nepali envoy said adding but the embassy has suggested such workers to contact the embassy if any such proposal is received by them.