On 27th May, 2020, Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism organised a panel discussion on “Gulf Migration: During and Aftermath of COVID-19” seeing the vast number of international migrants stuck in the Gulf region due to the sudden onset of coronavirus.
Dr Ganesh Gurung from the Nepal institute of Development studies gave us a gripping overview of the gulf migrant crisis in the Nepal context during the COVID-19 crisis. Dr Gurung says that approximately 1million Nepali people were employed in the gulf countries and the migrants constituted for about 1 billion every year in the form of remittances they used to send back.
However, ever since COVID-19 struck the world, Nepali migrants are either willingly expressing their need to return or being asked by their employers to forcefully go back. In fact, few gulf countries like Kuwait have written back to Nepal saying that they want to send back Nepali workers. However, since the Nepal government was in lockdown in May, the PM wrote to the heads of the Gulf states requesting them to accommodate the Nepali workers till Nepal is ina position to take them back.
The problems that the Nepal government is facing is not only facilitating access to embassies for the migrant workers in the gulf but also formulate strategies to re-integrate them once they return. Approximately 25% of one million migrants are expected to return and to keep them in isolation should be made. Conducting adequate testing as well as sending them back to their villages at the earliest is also among the top priorities of the nation.
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has chocked Nepal’s economic sectors. Food security is a major issue that the government was trying to tackle along with managing the data discrepancies on the number of migrant workers abroad as majority of them left illegally.
Coordination with SAARC and destination countries is an urgent requirement to facilitate the movement of the migrants. Nepal is since then trying its best to adopt a multifaceted approach to address the migrant’s issue, like accelerating employment opportunities and rehabilitating the migrants in the home country.
UjjwalaLakhanpal is a final year student of International Relations and Economics at Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, Gandhinagar. Her areas of interest include Conflict Studies, Asian geopolitics, International migrations and the Middle East. Twitter Id- @UjjwalaLp