21/10/2020
Wage theft of migrants during pandemic | Nepali Times
Since May, the company has been forcing him to not just carry out his regular duties, but
also to clean toilets, collect trash and do some heavy-lifting manual job for another
company. The compensation from the other company is being taken by Sharma’s original
employer.
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“It has been five months since I sent any money home to my family. I barely have any
money to feed myself twice a day, and have been relying on loans from friends,” says
Sharma, who has stopped working for a month.
Besides Sharma, there are five other Nepalis in the same situation in the company. Three
returned to Nepal recently, after a bitter confrontation with the boss. The two remaining
Nepalis continue to work along with other migrants from Bangladesh and Burma.
The theory and practice of zero-cost migration
(https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/the-theory-and-practice-of-zero-costmigration/), Upasana Khadka
Examples of wages fully or partially unpaid, or end-of-service benefits contractually
owed but denied, were common even before the pandemic. But one of the most
inhumane realities of the Covid-19 crisis is that workers at the lowest rungs of the ladder
who worked for past months under difficult conditions have been denied compensation.
For many migrant workers, a good portion of their two-year contract abroad is spent
repaying recruitment costs to intermediaries. A worker in debt-bondage who has to
return prematurely incurs a heavy loss.
Getting on the plane amidst a messy repatriation process was a priority for many
migrants, but the scars of the unpleasant experience abroad and the pressure to repay
the high-interest loans to finance it will continue to burden them.
Forty-three returnees from the UAE came to Kathmandu from all parts of Nepal this
82 to file a complaint with the government’s Department of Foreign Employment.
week
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Each worker had paid above Rs250 000 to get a job as a driver which was supposed to
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