Nepalis planning to work in Qatar and other Gulf countries should be given the necessary skills and training before leaving their home country to help prevent them being exploited, a spokesman for Nepalis living abroad has said.
Unskilled and poorly educated Nepali expats are “vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of middlemen and recruitment agencies” that send labor to Gulf states, Shesh Ghale, Non-Resident Nepalese Association President, told the Qatar Tribune.
He called on the Nepal government to take action, with help from Gulf states, to set up training and skills centers to brief would-be migrant workers on their rights before they leave their home state.
“The Nepalese government must put in place a proper scanning mechanism to prevent unskilled labor from being exploited by manpower agencies.
It must collaborate with employers and the GCC governments directly to understand their requirements and possibly invite them to Nepal to set up training centers to skill the local youth before getting them ready for jobs abroad,” he added.
Ghale was in Doha at the weekend addressing more than 500 Nepali expats at a convention for the NRNA National Coordination Council.
Better labor rights
Ghale’s appeals echo similar calls made by Nepal’s State Minister for Labor, Tek Bahadur Gurung, in April.
At that time, he met with Qatar’s Labor Minister Abdullah bin Saleh Al Khulaifi during an official visit to Katmandu to enhance conditions for Nepalis in Qatar.
According to Nepali media, Gurung requested improved insurance coverage for Nepali workers that, if implemented, would mean that families of those killed by heart attacks or other unknown causes would be entitled to compensation.
According to local publication Kantipur, in around 70 percent of the cases where Nepalis have died in Qatar and the cause of their deaths has been recorded as “unknown,” their families have received no monetary assistance.
As the deceased are often the main breadwinners for their wider families, this causes significant hardship.
Pre-departure orientation sessions for workers and enforcing the need for employers to pay the illegal commissions regularly demanded by manpower agencies were also raised as key concerns during the Qatar Labor Minister’s four-day visit.
It is illegal for recruitment agencies and sub-agents to charge fees to send workers from Nepal to Qatar, but the practice is rampant and often causes a worker to be beset with debt before he leaves his home country.
A 160-page, Qatar Foundation-commissioned report, Migrant Labor Recruitment to Qatar, which was published last year said the system was “essentially a form of extortion by agents to secure jobs in Qatar.”
According to that report, Nepalis seeking to work in Qatar fork out an average $1,300 in fees – the highest of any of the five top labor-sending countries.
To secure contracts, recruiters often offer to pay companies between $200-$600 per employee needed. The agent then recoups that money from the workers by adding it on to their admin fees.
Calling for an end to the system, the report said:
“This practice must be seen as one of the most cynically exploitative practices in modern labor recruitment. It is the most vulnerable, the poorest, low-skilled, least-educated and least able to pay who are charged the fees (by the agents).”
Indonesia visit
Meanwhile, it would appear that Indonesian President Joko Widodo is keen to build relations with Qatar, with plans underway for a two-day trip to the state in September, Qatar Tribune reports.
The Indonesian Ambassador to Qatar, Deddy Saiful Hadi told the newspaper that the focus of the proposed visit would be to strengthen economic ties, citing a prospective surge in the number of Indonesian workers moving to Qatar as job opportunities increase.
However, the visit would be in the shadow of a decision made by Widodo in May this year to ban Indonesians from working as domestic help in Qatar and 20 other countries in the region.
Reportedly implemented to protect the “human values and the dignity of the nation,” the ban is due to come into effect this month. It does not affect those already working abroad, but prevents any new workers seeking overseas employment from getting jobs in the region.
Thoughts?
One can only applaud the Indonesian President Joko Widodo for his decision to stop the exploitation of his people as super cheap domestic helpers.
Expatriating your people as cheap labor to the Middle East has no affect on the GDP of the country as a whole – it merely degrades the value of your people and does damage to the name of your nation .
While some of these maids might have an individual financial advantage – this advantage does not extend beyond their immediate relatives and has virtually no impact on the national GDP.
Most Qataris will probably not agree with the statement above, but look at the math:
According to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia%E2%80%93Qatar_relations#Migrant_workers
There are 40.000 Indonesians working in Qatar (mostly Maids I would assume) .
40.000 maids with an annual salary of around 4000.- USD each (or maybe less?) will result in a total of 160 Mio USD!
Compare this to the Indo GDP of around 900 billion (by the way that is almost 4 times the size of the GDP of Qatar), then you find that this is not even two hundredth of one percent (less then 0.02 Percent) of the GDP.
Surely from a macro-economic and a political point of view, it is better to keep your people at home in your country where they probably only earn 20% of the money they make in Qatar – but in return they keep their dignity, stay close to their family and are treated with respect.
Replaceable.
Indeed – until there are more smart presidents !
Or laws, that guarantee that everybody makes enough money in a full time job to be able live with his family in the country where he works (in decent conditions).
That will of course mean that a lot of people who keep a maid in terrible condition today, will have to start to do their laundry themselves again – or clean up after their kids, etc. etc.
Not possible ?
Go for a holiday to Switzerland and talk to a cleaning lady there – she makes 4000.- month minimum salary a month.
So clearly in some countries your statement “replacable” is incorrect – and let’s hope there will be more and more of these countries in the future.
What’s even funnier is expats coming to stay or live in Qatar and getting a maid. They also get used to having their laundry etc done by others at a very cheap and low cost. There’s no way in their own native country would they be able to afford it much less try and consider it.
We have to look at the bigger picture as to why these foreigners work as domestic helpers. They are making way more money working abroad then would in their own countries. Despite what other countries like US and Europe think in the lines of poor wages being paid. It’s still way more than they see in a month working in their own countries. Now if you’d like to talk about treatment in some households that’s a fifferent story. But salary is actually fair when looking at the society and economy these domestic workers are coming from originally. Shoot, most of their native countries won’t give them time or day if their outside their own hospitals dying on their doorstep. They need money to get in to save their own lives or literally die trying. Here in Qatar if someone is in need of medical it’s given freely. They won’t let you die just because you don’t have money.
Except when they’re out of the country they aren’t really on the books, healthcare is not a concern, welfare can be reduced as the family will be taking care of their own so to speak, paying for education, the retirement of the older generation too can be supported by family members living abroad; there is a substantial argument for having members of your population living outside and sending money back home, beyond just the reparations
Indonesia has a population of 250 Million people.
40.000 (and if you like throw in some of the families as well) make no difference for the nation whatsoever – again we are talking less than 0.1 % of the population.
There is no argument for sending your population outside as cheap labor force !
Use the cheap labor in your own country and make things work there.
Then there is a substantial argument to allow specialist to work abroad – and generate real income.
It’s a good thing economics and political decisions aren’t based on descriptive statistics then isn’t it
$4000????
Look at the official figures of remittances from the World Bank as % of its GDP for Nepal for the last decade. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS
How can you say it has virtually no impact on the national GDP?
Given that both Nepal and Qatar know that this exploitation by rogue recruiters is happening, what could be more simple than for the Nepalese government to set up a single official government recruitment agency dedicated to the GCC countries, and work with a single official recruitment department in each of those GCC countries and so obviate the need for the rogues. Yes they would be very large and very busy departments at both ends of the chain, but if Nepal really cares about this issue then surely it is a worthy expense.
I guess the only problem with that is like the POEA in Phil it is open to widespread corruption, where the government workers use their position to extort money out of their citizens.
A better option would be for the Nepalese government to go after and prosecute rogue agencies charging fees with prison sentences.
Surely it would be easier to regulate one in-house body of civil servants than a set of fly-by-night recruiters. Without being disparaging to the unskilled workers all they need to be is fit and willing so it’s not as if there’s a pecking order that needs to be overcome by bribery. There’s also nothing to stop the in-house staff from being given prison sentences if warranted.
It would be nice to think it works that way but the current situation tells us otherwise. How many Filipino POEA agents or immigration officials go to jail for extortion or corruption? Very few if any. How many Indonesian immigration officials who fleece their returning expats promising them problems with their passports if they don’t pay go to jail? Never heard of a single case. The same in India, you want to get something done hand over some money to the government official and suddenly all the road blocks disappear.
Remember when the Nepalese Ambassador said treatment of Nepalis was bad in Qatar and should be addressed? She was quickly summoned back home and replaced.
Victim blaming at its best.
How is this victim blaming? The more aware and informed a laborer is before coming to the GCC to better prepared he would be.