Kathmandu, October 31

A recent investigation by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has exposed how employees at the Immigration Office of Tribhuvan International Airport collude with middlemen to grant departure permit to hundreds of people, mainly women, on visit visa for Qatar and Dubai, in an unauthorised manner.

This was revealed after the anti-graft body arrested immigration officer Kamal Prasad Parajuli from his office on July 31 for colluding with agents to send youths to Gulf countries in contravention of the existing laws and rules, which prohibit sending women to Dubai and Qatar as housemaids. He was found putting departure stamps on their visas without maintaining their records to cover up his unethical acts.

Joint Secretary Pradip Kumar Koirala, CIAA spokesperson, said Parajuli had teamed up with other immigration employees to issue departure permits to as many as 249 persons. They used to disable official computer network and exchange SMS for communication to decide who should be provided with departure permit on visit visa.

According to the CIAA, other immigration employees involved in the illegal act are Manahari Baral, Dinesh KM, Toran Parajuli, Chakra Bahadur Shrestha, Manoj Kumar Pokharel, Jagadish Chandra Nepali, Bijay Sapkota, Shailendra Dhakal, Birsingh Bhandari, Padam Prasad Bajgain, Roshan Gautam and Bhoj Prakash Neupane. Gautam and Neupane are computer operators. According to call detail records retrieved from immigration employees, they did not verify any document or maintain records of women migrating for work to Gulf countries on visit visa once the migrants provided them Rs 10,000 each, through agents.

They were found to have destroyed evidence of departure of women without entering their details into the Immigration System of the TIA. According to the CIAA, the immigration employees had collected Rs 2.48 million from 248 persons for issuing departure permits. They were charged at the Special Court in accordance with section 3(1) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The anti-graft body has claimed recovery of Rs 2.48 million along with a fine equivalent to the amount from each defendant.

The culprits were dismissed from service and were handed down jail sentence. The CIAA said further investigation into other suspects was under way.

In 2012, the government had imposed ban on women below 30 years of age from leaving for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates to work as domestic helpers. To make the provision further stringent, the age bar was later reduced to 24 years in 2015 by imposing ban on the women aspiring to work in Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon and Malaysia.

In March 2017, the Parliament’s International and Labour Relations Committee had instructed the government to impose ban on Nepali women taking up jobs in Gulf countries as housemaids.

According to the 2019 report ‘Rights Situation of Migrant Workers’ released by the National Human Rights Commission, various studies showed that the ban did not stop women from migrating to Gulf countries, rather they opted for illegal means to go to Gulf countries for employment challenging the restriction.

The government had taken such measures to protect women migrant workers from forced labour and other forms of exploitation.

“However, these measures have not discouraged the agents active in sending women abroad through illegal means. If a woman goes for foreign employment through illegal channel and she gets injured or dies during her illegal stay in the destination country, her family members will not get any financial assistance from the government,” the NHRC said.