Migrants in lurch as embassy staff overworked

KATHMANDU, JAN 30 -In the face of an intensive crackdown on illegal migrant workers in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia and an ever increasing number of passport seekers, Nepal’s missions in major labour destinations are in desperate need of additional staffers to handle an ‘unprecedented crisis’. The understaffed embassies say they cannot cope with the current workload, with many working ten hours a day, seven days a week.

In total, the government has deputed 29 diplomatic staffers with the capacity to serve approximately 90 percent of around 2.5 million migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Malaysia.

The dearth of manpower has mostly affected embassies in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia where there has been extensive crackdowns on illegal migrant workers in recent months.  While Nepal’s embassy in Riyadh claims it has repatriated around 90 percent of workers staying illegally in the oil-rich kingdom, a rising number of illegal Nepali workers are facing arrest in Malaysia.

The scarcity of human resources in the embassies has placed unprecedented demands on officials, affecting the quality of service provided. Approximately 5,000 illegal Nepali migrant workers missed the opportunity to make use of an amnesty granted by the Saudi King. According to migrants, the embassy failed to provide them the required exit visa on time, while the embassy says the workload was greater than the understaffed embassy could withstand.

Due to the manpower crunch, Nepal’s embassy in Malaysia, employing just eight diplomatic staff, has been unable to trace detained Nepali workers, let alone assist them in returning home. Officials at the embassy say regular paperwork and official duties hamper their ability to act.

“There is an immediate need of additional staffers to endure the growing work pressure,” said Amal Kiran Dhakal, labour attaché at the embassy.

Though Nepal’s embassy in Saudi Arabia is ‘almost done’ with illegal migrants, like other embassies in the Gulf it is facing huge demands for passports while attempting to perform other responsibilities including rescuing victimized women and men, repatriating the deceased and claiming insurance and other benefits for injured migrants.

The five embassies concerned collect applications from around 400 passport seekers each day as the 2015 deadline to phase out non-machine readable passports looms. It currently takes at least three months for migrants to renew or replace existing passports due to the lack of resources in the Department of Passport, despite Nepali citizens (both inside and outside the country) paying the highest fee in South Asia for the service.  

Stakeholders said that they are aware of the scarcity of human resources in the Gulf but are in no position to dispatch additional workers due to resource constraints, a common problem faced by all government bodies in Nepal. Unlike other labour-exporting countries including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, Nepal does not have a ministry for foreign employment. The Department of Foreign Employment, the sole authority to oversee migrant issues, has just 97 staffers, while the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Employment has around 1000 staffers, despite Sri Lanka exporting half the amount of workers that Nepal does. Foreign Ministry officials blame the Finance Ministry among others for failing to provide an adequate budget to depute more staffers and resources. “Ironically, the migrants are sustaining the economy but  the government has invested little for their welfare and betterment. There has been consultation with other government bodies for funds to strengthen the overall capacity of the embassies depending on the number of workers they have to oversee,” said Deepak Dhital, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson.

Officials claim that they are planning to recruit more local staff as they are cheaper, efficient and easily accessible. Though the Ministry of Labour and Employment said it’s working to send additional labour attaches, sources said the embassies are pressing the Foreign Ministry to abort the plan, arguing that local staffers were ‘cheaper and more productive’.

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