Every day more than 1,000 migrant workers travel from Nepal to the Gulf to work, often under slave-like conditions. Tricked by employment officers and promises of good wages, they end up paying off the debts they have incurred from buying their passport and ticket.
The radio waves are spreading
'We try to prevent these cases through information,' Bijaya Rai Shrestha, Pourakhi's founder and chairman during the last two and a half years, says. 'We now have 109 so-called “listeners' clubs” in Nepal,'
The listeners meet and pass on their knowledge locally.
When damage is done, however, Pourakhi tries to help. When called by a desperate maid from somewhere in the Gulf, by a worried family member or by one of Nepal's ambassadors, they come to the assistance.
The head of Pourakhi's emergency desk in Katmandu speaks Arabic and calls up bad employers to tell them about the migrant’s rights. If this doesn't help they advise the migrant worker to escape to Nepal's embassy from where Pourakhi will help them to return.
The government must take responsibility
Pourakhi
Pourakhi works at preventing uninformed job-migration through information via the Nepalese radio. They also help victims of bad employers in the Gulf countries to get away and home to Nepal. Here they are ready with a temporary crisis home, legal and practrical advice and assistance in retraining and possible reuniting of families.
The organization also lobbies for better laws and rules for migrant workers – in Nepal and regionally in Asia and the Gulf via the Asian Migrations Forum. Among other things to secure ratification of the long awaited new ILO convention no. 189 from 2011 as 'Domestic Workers Convention'. Nepal and a couple of Gulf countries are contemplating, but they need pressure.
'Pourakhi' is Nepali and means 'hard working'.
'Our government is only concerned with the money that the migrant workers send home,' Bijaya says. 'They ought to do more for their own citizens.' That is why Pourakhi keeps contacting the politicians.
'Our influential lobby is instrumental in the passing of a new bill on employment abroad. Among other things there should be a female labour market attaché at Nepal's embassies if more than 1,000 Nepalese women work in a country,’ she says.
Bijaya herself is a migrant-survivor as they call the women who have overcome their difficulties. After two years as an undocumented migrant in Japan she was thrown out of the country.
Afterwards neither her husband nor her in-laws understood why she wanted to cry out about the horrific conditions and thereby attract negative attention to herself? 'You are in all the newspapers!'
The husband became a member himself
But Bijaya was stubborn, and one of her friends persuaded the husband, also a returned migrant.
'If you don't let her speak up many other women will suffer. If she doesn't speak for them they won't have a voice.'
Literally, many people from the outskirts of Nepal do not speak proper Nepali. So in the end her husband and in-laws accepted and today he is a member of Pourakhi himself.
The public image of the returned migrants is very bad. Parents or husband do not mind sending the women away and receiving the money. But if the women return empty-handed they are often disowned. 'You have been mixed up with the Muslims – you aren't clean,' the accusation goes.
The poor move furthest away
It is a common misunderstanding that the migrants who move to the Gulf area are better off. 'On the contrary,' Bijaya says. 'Often the poorest people from the most far away areas are looked up by the employment officers and lured into going to the Gulf.'
'The women from the lower regions down towards India know more and will just cross the open border to India from season to season.'
Dolma's story
Now Dolma enters the balcony in the sharp sunlight. She is willing to tell her story about two years in the shadow. It comes out in broken English:
Her parents had no resources so she borrowed 230 USD for the expenses for the middleman. He also received the same amount from the Lebanese family she ended up with. Totally, she ended up with a debt of approx 550 USD for other expenses such as passport, luggage etc.
It took her six months to pay this back. Subsequently she was able to send approx 45 USD. home per month to her parents and three younger siblings.
Miserable conditions
Asked how she was treated, she turns to speaking Nepali. 'They nagged and scolded!' She had to stay indoors. Her hands and feet were damaged by always being immersed in soapy water. She slept in the kitchen and only had one set of working clothes – plus a night dress and a pair of sandals.
If the family went out for dinner on Sundays she was not allowed to touch anything but some tea and a slice of bread. Her only contact with her family was a 2 minutes phone call which she was permitted every 2-3 months. 'It was so difficult and I worried all the time.'
One's own relatives are often one's worst critics
She came back to Kathmandu last night. Here she has no family or friends. That's how it is for many people and therefore shady taxi drivers lure many of the returned migrants to a hotel where the host and the driver steal all their money and force them into prostitution.
But Dolma ran into Pourakhi's employee at the airport, 'and by chance I had heard about Pourakhi over the radio before I left so I trusted her and went here with her.'
Safe migration
Bijaya stresses that migration is a valid way of handling the poverty that the women are fighting. 'But it must be an informed choice and in a regulated labour market – including rights.'
As part of the ACT Alliance, DCA shares this point of view and supports Pourakhi's important work under a regional programme for 'Safe Migration'.
ACT Alliance in Nepal includes DCA, ICCO from Holland and NCA from Norway plus FinnChurchAid from Finland and LWF Nepal. The Dutch, Norwegians and Finns share an office at DCA's address in the Lalitpur district in Kathmandu.