(MENAFN- The Peninsula) A former Nepali ambassador to Qatar has accused the government in Kathmandu of turning a blind eye to the problem of local recruiters squeezing money from Qatar-bound workers.
Surya Nath Mishra said that during his tenure as envoy in Doha, he came across many Nepali workers who had paid more than Rs100,000 (QR3,660) to manpower agencies in Nepal to come to Qatar for work.
"I had recommended action against many manpower agencies that illegally charged money from migrant workers but no one at the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) did anything," Mishra was quoted by nepaltimes.com as saying.
DoFE is part of Nepal's Ministry of Labor and Employment and regulatory body for local labor market.
The online newspaper said that Qatar and Nepal had already signed an agreement in 2005 which says that all costs of hiring Nepali workers must be borne by Qatari companies.
But Kumud Khanal of the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (Nafea), umbrella organization of Nepali manpower agencies, said that clause of the agreement was never implemented.
He said Qatari manpower agencies demand cut from their Nepali counterparts.
"The Qatari government needs to regulate its recruitment agencies," he said. "We just pass on what they charge us to the Nepali workers."
But Mishra Nepali recruiters were not above blame. "It may be true that Qatari manpower agencies also demand a cut for finding jobs for the workers, but the Nepali recruiter charges the worker much more than what they give to the Qataris," Mishra said. Nepal's Minister of State for Labor and Employment, Tek Bahadur Gurung, who had detailed discussions with Qatar's Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, H E Dr Abdullah bin Saleh Al Khulaifi, during his visit to Kathmandu earlier this week, told enapltimes.com the Nepali government is committed to implementing a zero-cost recruitment deal (whereby Qatar-bound workers will be hired and sent free of cost).
"I will soon visit Qatar and find out what we can do to ensure that Nepali workers get to go there without paying a single rupee," Gurung was quoted as saying.
Kathmandu-based nepaltimes.com quoted an unnamed labor rights activist as saying that there is a stranglehold of manpower mafia and it has a nexus with Nepali politicians so tight that many are skeptical that the zero-cost deal will never be implemented.
Ganesh Gurung, an expert on migration and the remittance economy, said everyone except the poor and illiterate migrant workers, knew about the zero-cost deal but no one was willing to implement it.
"On the sidelines of several international conferences, I have drawn the attention of Nepali and Qatari officials to the problem," Gurung said.
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