Apropos of the news story “Nepali workers falling prey to deceptive agents, shows AI report” (THT, June 25, Page 2), the problem of Nepali enslavement and debt bondage of migrant workers start right here in their home country.

There is very little the authorities in Qatar, Malaysia or other labour destinations can do to ameliorate Nepalese workers’ sufferings when the local thugs in collusion with government apparatus send them on a trip to virtual enslavement with false promises.

An outgoing envoy of a labour receiving country had implicitly blamed the Nepal government for insisting on the use of agents for labour recruitment. If there were no agents, the companies that needed workers would have traveled to Nepal and selected the workers directly.

It would certainly have been a lot of work for the hiring companies but they could have opened their own local offices like foreign airlines have done with their online managers. This would have certainly stopped rampant cheating and deceit that are more a rule than an exception in the current scenario. Be that as it may, AI can now put an overbearing pressure on the government to clean up the act in the labour recruitment business.

Irrespective of the illegal and immoral activities of the agents, the government has to be responsible for the welfare of its nationals, the goose that lays the golden eggs for the country.

Ninety nine percent of the problem that the migrants face in the labour recruitment countries can be sorted out in the country through good government intervention before the migrants board a plane.

AI has the power to force the government to take care of its nationals through various instruments including international blacklisting of unscrupulous government servants and recruiters.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Unkind

Aayushman Deshraj’s face has become one of the favorite topics to many to eventually make fun of. Priyanka Karki and Anmol KC too could not remain untouched by venomous comments which spread like a wildfire.

Some of the unkind comments, which, to everybody’s surprise, were creative and some were hideous.Trolls these days have become unwelcome guests of our social routines.

At times we become the helpless audience, or sometimes we are forced to become victims whereas most of the time, full of pride we tend to vent our malice. What do we really get to fish when we take a stab at trolls?  Let’s take a run at quantifying the returns of such spiteful investments we make.

The repercussions are huge indeed. The age that should have begotten zeal and gusto to one’s life is now all crushed and diverted.

The yield here seems to have increased very much but at the cost of our claim to have respect for moral principles.

Sneha Rijal, Kupondole