KATHMANDU, JULY 19
While the government of Nepal has banned people from working as domestic workers in Gulf countries for more than six years now, around 80 per cent of such workers going abroad have been using informal channels from neighbouring countries including India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.
As per Apravasi Mahila Kamdar Samuha (AMKAS Nepal), an organisation of rights activists advocating for the rights of immigrants, around 80 per cent of women who went abroad for domestic work used irregular routes.
Within the last six months, 60 out of 73 women rescued by AMKAS Nepal had reached Gulf countries through irregular channels.
A number of those rescued between January and June this year have been found to have mental issues and were provided psychosocial counselling by AMKAS Nepal.
Out of the 73 people rescued by AMKAS, five were found to be victims of human trafficking.
Among them, two were rescued from Kuwait, one each from Oman and UAE, while another foreign woman was rescued from Nepal, which highlights the international dimension of human trafficking and the wide reach of trafficking networks, according to AMKAS Nepal.
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Since 2017, the government of Nepal has banned people from working as domestic workers in Gulf countries. On April 5, 2017, the then Labour and Consumer Interest Committee of the Federal Parliament instructed the government not to send domestic workers without guaranteeing their safety.
Following the ban, various discussions, debates, and protests have been carried out under the heading.
Although questions were also raised in national and international forums, the government has kept the ban on migrating to work as domestic help citing various reasons including lack of security, fixed salary, guarantee of facilities, and so on. According to Bijaya Rai Shrestha, founder, and executive director of AMKAS Nepal, while policymakers agree that the ban is not a solution, it continues to exist and needs to be lifted immediately.
"The ban is wrong and it has narrowed women's right to employment. We hope the Nepal government will revoke this decision immediately," Rai said. She also expressed her belief that parliamentarians will look into this matter.
After the ban was heavily criticised for causing problems for women workers, forcing them to go through irregular routes and increasing the risks, the Parliament's Industry and Commerce Committee and Labour and Consumer Interest Committee issued another proposal to the government on September 29, 2020, to send domestic workers for foreign employment in the case there is a separate and concrete legal provision regarding the services, conditions, and facilities for domestic workers in the country that wants to employ such workers from Nepal, basic labour rights for such workers, arrangement of a strong and effective bilateral mechanism to resolve the problems faced by the workers and provide training, a worker seeking to go abroad should be able to communicate in the language of the respective country, and should have acquired basic knowledge of traditions, culture, and customs of their destination country.
Similarly, the committee has sought equal treatment between Nepalis and workers of the respective countries in the same line of work, the presence of a legal system to take action against employers, owners, or family members who commit physical, mental, and sexual violence against domestic workers, and there should be a system where domestic workers can easily contact the family and the embassy.
But even though the parliamentary committee has given such instructions, the corresponding arrangement has not been implemented.
As per International Labour Organisation, over 67 million domestic workers are employed in the world. Of them, 80 per cent, or 54 million are women. Some work full-time as domestic workers at the employer's house, while others go to a house or multiple houses to work for a certain period of time. But among those who move abroad for employment as domestic workers from Nepal, the majority of them stay and work in the employer's house.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 20, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
