6/22/2021 South Asia’s migrants share problems, share solutions | Nepali Times There were also spikes and falls for bilateral reasons which revealed the interconnectedness of migration corridors. In May 2018, Nepal stopped workers from going to Malaysia owing to high recruitment costs paid by migrant workers. A month later, Malaysia stopped Bangladeshi workers from coming to Malaysia owing to malpractices in the recruitment system. While the Malaysia-Nepal corridor resumed in September 2019, the draft BangladeshMalaysia MOU modeled after the agreement with Nepal was stalled by a number of factors such as Covid-19, change in leadership in Malaysia and its ban on new foreign worker recruitment. Many interlinked factors shape the outflows and return of workers but the shocks brought by Covid-19 were unprecedented as no country has been shielded from its effects and the impact isn’t localized to specific regions to target interventions. Deployment of new workers dropped significantly in 2020: 74% in India, 64% in Pakistan, and 69% in Bangladesh. (See below). But remittances defied expectations (https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/defying58 predictions-nepals-remittances-still-high/) and even increased in Pakistan by 17% and in Shares https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/south-asias-migrants-shared-problems-share-solutions/ 7/19