Neha Choudhary, ILO Kathmandu
National project coordinator,
ILO Integrated programme on Fair Recruitment (FAIR)
When I first met Ram Kumari Chaudhary, she was an extremely shy, but solemn, 19-year-old. She told me she wanted to go to work in Jordan to support her parents, adding that there were few opportunities to find a decent job in Nepal. Soon afterwards, in 2017, I learned that she had found a job in Jordan’s booming garment industry, earning, on average, around US$350 a month. Every three or four months she faithfully sent back about three-quarters of her salary to her parents in Nepal.
After about 18 months, her father’s poor health forced her to resign and return home. She brought with her a refund of her social security contributions worth about US$500, as well as some other savings. Her employer in Jordan also gave her a free airfare home as a welfare gesture. When we met again she had metamorphosed into a confident young lady, emboldened by her worldly experience and proud of her achievements. “I was able to make a support building a small home for my parents in the village,” she told me. “I have been supporting my father’s treatment. I brought back a flat screen TV when I came back. I have a modest saving if I want to do something. And, I have already been offered a job in a factory here. Given my international experience, the salary package is also good. Had I stayed in Nepal, I would not have earned that much.”
Chaudhary’s household is one of the 57 per cent in Nepal receiving remittances from migrant workers. So important are these financial flows to the Nepali economy that they are equivalent to 26 per cent of the country’s GDP. And, they are growing. In the financial year 2018/19 alone the country received migrants’ remittances of NPR 879.26 billion (US$ 7.76 billion), up from NPR 231.72 billion (US$ 2.05 billion) in the fiscal year 2009/10[1].
25-year-old Maya Chepang Praja, from Chitwan, south-west of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, opted to work abroad to support the upbringing of her son, then aged three, after her husband abandoned them. Despite very little education, in Jordan she earned an average of USD275 per month – more than double the USD130 she was paid working at a factory in Nepal – and she was able to save most of this to send back to Nepal for her son.
Unfortunately, she was forced to return to Nepal after less than nine months of working in Jordan when her son, who was being cared for by his grandmother, had his leg crushed in an accident. “If the accident didn’t occur and if I had stayed back [in Jordan], I would have earned enough to give my son a good life, a good education. However, whatever I earned in the nine months helped me at least get his leg back. I will always be grateful for that,” she told me. She is now looking for another job abroad.
The importance of migration and remittances will continue to grow in Nepal, because approximately 500,000 individuals are entering the labour market annually but only one in 10 are finding jobs. In these circumstances, it seems close to impossible to lead a quality life, with access to health, education and decent housing, without going for foreign employment. Furthermore, as these young women’s stories show, opportunities to work overseas in decent jobs have also made an important contribution to the empowerment of Nepali women in a broader sense of the term. This is seldom taken into consideration in larger studies on the socio-political impact of remittances and foreign employment.
[1] Figures from Nepal Rastra Bank, 2019
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Max Tunon, Senior Programme Officer / Coordinator of the GMS TRIANGLE project (Tripartite Action to Protect Migrant Workers within and from the Greater Mekong Subregion from Labour Exploitation
Imagine that you had a family to feed and moving abroad was your only option to earn a decent wage — but you didn’t know where or how to find work overseas. Or imagine that your daughter works abroad but that you haven’t had any word from her for months and months.
Or ask yourself what you’d do if you were injured at work a long way from home, with a hospital bill you couldn’t afford and an employer who refused to pay you as much as you’d agreed.
Where would you turn for help?
Migrant workers receive information and training at the Migrant Worker Resource Centre run by the Foundation for AIDS Rights (FAR), in Rayong Province in the south of Thailand. FAR works on health and labour rights issues, targeting the Cambodian migrant community.
Many of you reading this would go to a friend, family member or a trusted government office. But millions of migrants across the Asia Pacific region have a much harder time finding assistance. Recognizing this gap, the ILO has set up some 23 Migrant Worker Resource Centres (MRCs) in six Southeast Asian countries.
One of the most effective ways to combat widely recognized abuses (including underpayment of wages, confiscation of passports, substandard working conditions, and confinement in the workplace) is to ensure that migrant workers are equipped with knowledge and strategies to safeguard their labour and human rights.
MRC staff are counselors, confidants and community leaders who encourage and enable migrant workers to understand and assert their rights while minimizing their exposure to widespread exploitative practices.
“Before I came to this centre, I didn’t know that my new employer was not allowed to keep my passport. It was only during counselling that this was made clear to me.”
When exploitation can’t be avoided or has already been suffered, MRCs can help migrant workers obtain access to justice. MRCs serve as ad hoc complaints departments, linking migrant workers with legal-aid service providers or official channels for lodging complaints. The MRCs are integrated into government-run employment service centres and are also run by trade unions and NGOs. They have different focuses, in terms of gender and nationality or ethnicity, sectors of work, and type of interventions.
In just four years, MRCs funded by the ILO’s GMS Triangle Project, have already benefitted over 50,000 migrant workers. Through MRC referrals and legal assistance, migrant workers have been awarded around USD$ 1.2 million in compensation.
Now, MRCs are beginning to evolve beyond legal and counseling services to become trusted community centres. For example, one MRC in Cambodia received the family of a rape victim who was looking for assistance. While that’s not the core focus of MRCs, it shows what happens when a service gains the trust of community and can adapt to local it needs—it becomes a first-stop for anyone seeking help.
MRCs are also beginning to yield some long-term outcomes. Almost 90 per cent of sample of clients at Cambodian and Vietnamese MRCs who migrated through legal channels said that counseling from MRC staff influenced their decision not to migrate through irregular channels—hence reducing their risk of being exploited.
MRC services are also clearly linked to better protection and knowledge of rights for potential migrant workers. One beneficiary who was interviewed after receiving counselling at the Bac Ninh MRC in Viet Nam said: “Before I came to this centre, I didn’t know that my new employer was not allowed to keep my passport. It was only during counselling that this was made clear to me.”
ILO Director-General Guy Ryder recently met migrant workers from Myanmar an MRC in Samut Prakarn Province, Thailand. This centre run by Thai trade unions aims to improve support services and access to justice for migrant workers.
MRCs also play a secondary function: revealing trends in the types of abuses faced by migrants as well as laws which aren’t being adequately enforced.
This information provides invaluable evidence in advocating for improved laws, policies and programmes.
To further the reach of the MRCs, the ILO has published an MRC Operations Manual in several languages as a resource for any organisation wanting to establish support services for migrant workers.
In the future, the ILO envisages MRCs growing into social and community hubs, enabling peer-to-peer learning, and providing important services including document storage and free Skype to the families of those who are working abroad. Regular contact via MRC resources and networks can ensure that we know something has gone wrong as soon as it goes wrong. And if it does, the MRC is there to help.
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After completing high school, I left Kathmandu for the United States to pursue a higher education. That was around 15 years ago and back then, most young people who left Nepal went to similar destinations in the “developed world.”
Not my cousin. He dropped out of high school and went to work in the Middle East. Close to two decades later he still works there, having just left Nepal for another two-year stint.
At the time, he was something of a pioneer. But today, millions of others have followed in his footsteps and gone to other developing countries in the so-called “Global South” in search of opportunity. In fact, between 2000 and 2013, more people from developing countries migrated to other countries in the Global South than to traditional destinations like Europe or the United States.
At Tribhuwan International Airport in Kathmandu, the lines of people waiting to board flights for the Middle East now dwarf those headed to Europe, Australia or North America.
The jobs which attract them tend to be low-skilled, but still pay much more than similar work at home. My cousin, for example, has a sales job and makes around $1,000 per month, which is about five times as much as he made selling tyres in eastern Nepal.
Paying a price
A new report, presented by ILO Director-General Guy Ryder at the 2014 International Labour Convention, calls for fair migration policies and stronger measures to combat forced labour. Get the report
But the extra money comes at a price. He has to give his passport over to his employer when he arrives and needs an exit visa to leave the country. For all intents and purposes, he cannot go home without this employer’s consent.
“Some of my friends have been held up for six months, even after leaving their jobs,” he says.
Compared to many workers in the region, he counts himself lucky. He has furnished sleeping quarters, which he shares with three other men, and works in an air-conditioned complex. But he says that Nepalis often fare much worse.
Statistics are patchy, but reports of forced overtime, delayed wages, harsh working conditions and poor access to healthcare are common place.
Moreover, many migrant workers—including my cousin—often have to borrow money to move abroad and spend much of their first years’ earnings paying it back. My cousin is still repaying the $8,000 loan he took out to leave Nepal for his latest stint in Gulf. And yet, he’s still able to send $600 per month home—money his young wife depends on to raise their two-year old son.
Erasing exploitation
Evidence shows that, even despite the debts taken on by many migrants, they are still able to send back enough to reduce poverty and improve the quality of health care and education for their families. They also play a vital role in the countries they move to, filling jobs that contribute to their economic growth. In doing so, they help to offset problems faced by aging societies, such as a shortage of workers paying into pension schemes.
Migrant workers deserve better than to be exploited. Better labour inspection of sectors such as construction that tend to employ migrant workers, availability of legal recourse for workers to lodge complaints, possibility to have workers’ representatives, access to public services such as health care – are some of many policy measures that could be put in place in the destination countries.
My cousin and I live very different lives, but we are driven by the same creed – a quest for a better life, not just for ourselves but our families and children. As the world becomes ever more connected, we are all more likely to live and work outside our own country of birth. It’s in everyone’s interests to make sure migrant workers’ rights are protected.
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Amelita King-Dejardin
By Amelita King-Dejardin, ILO Domestic Work Specialist
I’ve done hundreds of interviews with domestic workers and their employers, and alarm bells always ring whenever I hear the statement: “I treat her like a member of the family.” In my experience, this declaration, with its vague cultural notions, often means that the domestic worker relies on the benevolence of the employer and not on her rights as a worker.
Paradoxically, I also worry about the emphasis – by journalists, government officials, employers and researchers in various countries – on the horrors suffered by migrant domestic workers – beaten to death, burned with a hot iron, raped, locked in. Of course, these extreme forms of abuse do occur and should be prevented and punished, but there’s a danger that attention is diverted from the much more widespread, subtle, daily forms of abuse that domestic workers bear while working as ‘part of the family’ in their own countries:
It’s the exceedingly long working hours, with days that can begin as early as 4 in the morning; the short, interrupted sleep time and seven-day working weeks with no day-off; the need to be available at all times, whether it’s day or night – the so called “service on demand”. And it’s the lack of paid leave and the very low wages they receive.
I see these situations in places I visit in my role as the ILO’s expert on domestic work. In India, I met a woman who was expected by her employer to clean the toilets with her bare hands; another who had to bear constant verbal abuse from the family. Almost everyone I met talked about long back-breaking hours.
Many of us employ domestic workers. In Tanzania, I was told that almost everyone has a domestic worker. But often we are blind to the abuses of their rights or take them as “normal”, without appreciating that we ourselves would suffer physically and psychologically if we had to endure such conditions.
Fair remuneration that allows decent living, rest, leisure and reasonable limits on working hours, are universal human rights which most of us believe are just. Yet many who hire domestic workers often fail to acknowledge that they’re abusing their rights.
This directly concerns us all and begins “at home” – in our families, in our communities. We need better laws that set clear ground rules for our employment relationships with the domestic workers we hire. But the fundamental change of mind and behaviour rests with us.
An argument I often hear is that limiting daily working hours and paying better wages are not feasible or affordable. We need to look at how much of this is myth and how much fact.
In the Philippines, 81 per cent of households that employ domestic workers belong to the top 20 per cent of the income ladder. For low-income working women who need people to care for their young children or sick, the domestic worker should not have to bear the cost. Governments and communities should find ways to address this need.
Read the ILO’s new report on domestic work
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