by
Weena Pun
23
March 2017
Risks
and opportunities for women migrant labourers from Nepal.
In
early 2004, Sushila Karki Pyakurel was on her way to Israel to work as a
caretaker when she met a government official in Bangkok, en route to South
Korea, for a sports programme. As soon as the man realised that she was headed
for the Middle East all by herself, he asked her to return home immediately.
The region was dangerous, he said, and he was willing to pay for her flight
back home.
Sushila
thought about the offer. She had already had qualms about the idea of working
in a distant country. For months she had debated whether it was wise to leave
behind her three-year-old son in order to take care of an unknown elderly in
Israel.
But
if she turned back now, who was going to recuperate the NPR 300,000 (USD 3000)
the family spent trying to find her husband a job in Cyprus? An equal sum had
already been spent on getting her to Israel. Besides, she was already out of
Nepal, and on her way. If she turned back now, she would be returning to
nothing more than a rented room in the Jadibuti locality of the Kathmandu
Valley and to a small khudra shop in Koteshwor. If she pushed on, Israel, its
money and mysteries were waiting. All she had to do was stick it out for a few
years, ‘act small’ and not pick a fight with her employers, no matter how angry
she felt. She politely declined the official’s offer and boarded the plane to
Israel.
Sushila
remained in Israel for almost nine years, successively looking after three
elderly women and one dying man, and squeezing in two visits to Nepal; the
first after four years, the second, three years after that. The worst times
were the early days when Sushila did not yet understand Hebrew. Once, just a
week into her first assignment, she had gone grocery shopping with the
granddaughter of the house. After they returned, the granddaughter realised
that she had lost her purse with money inside. The woman started asking Sushila
if she had seen the purse. Sushila replied ‘ken’ (‘yes’ in Hebrew), as she was
instructed by agent to say in response to every question in Israel. The woman then
asked if the purse was inside Sushila’s bag. Not knowing what was being asked,
but remembering that ‘ken’ would usually get her out of harm’s way, Sushila
said the word again. The granddaughter started rummaging through Sushila’s bag.
When nothing was found, the granddaughter called the agent in Israel and told
her that Sushila had stolen her purse. Confused and alarmed, Sushila started
crying.
After
the phone call, the granddaughter pulled a chair from under the dining table
and found the lost purse lying there all along. She apologised to Sushila and
the episode was soon put behind. Sushila realised she had to master Hebrew, and
learned the language in the next four months, with the help of Learn Hebrew
textbooks obtained from her agent.
Female
labour migration
According
to Nepal’s Department of Foreign Employment (DOFE), Sushila is one of the 433
people who applied for labour permits to work in Israel in the fiscal year
2003/04. It is not known how many of them were women. In the fiscal year
2011/12 – the last fiscal year for which data disaggregated by sex and
countries is available – 472 women obtained permits to work in Israel. This
figure is a fragment of the 22,958 women who received permits to work abroad in
that year. Most went to Kuwait (12,495), followed by the United Arab Emirates
(4523) and Malaysia (2210). The statistics available from the DOFE do not
reflect the number of women who go abroad illegally via India, using the open
Nepal-India border. In 2013/14, the total number of women who went abroad for
work with official permits went up to 29,154.
If
she turned back now, she would be returning to nothing more than a rented
room…and to a small khudra shop in Koteshwor. If she pushed on, Israel, its
money and mysteries were waiting.
The
above data does not indicate how many of these women working abroad are
employed in private households, but according to estimates, around 70 percent
work as domestic help. This number is on the rise despite sporadic bans
restricting women from working as domestic helps abroad. In 1998 after a young
woman died under mysterious circumstances in Kuwait, the Nepal Government
imposed a ban on women under the age of 30 years working as domestic help
overseas. In 2000, this ban was restricted to Gulf countries and in 2010, after
years of lobbying by activists, it was lifted. However, in 2012, in response to
the rising number of physical and sexual abuse faced by women working overseas,
the government reinstated the ban. While many reports state that the 2012 ban
only applies to the Gulf countries – perhaps because this is the region where
most women travel to for work and from where most cases of exploitation are
reported – the official notice issued by the Foreign Employment Promotion Board
does not specify any country or region.
The
salaries of Nepali domestic workers differ significantly depending on the
countries they work in. To compare, a ‘well-paid’ fulltime household help in
Nepal earns around NPR 8000 (USD 80) monthly, while those working in the Gulf
States and Malaysia make around NPR 30,000 (USD 300) a month. The highest
salaries are earned by domestic help in households in the United States,
Europe, Japan, Israel or South Korea. There, salaries are as high as NPR 90,000
(USD 900) or more per month. Not surprisingly then, most women (and men) prefer
to migrate to the West or other developed economies.
When
she started working for an 85-year-old woman with bone cancer in Khadera,
Sushila’s salary was USD 550 a month. When the woman died, six months into
Sushila’s service, the agent in Israel found her a 92-year-old bedridden woman
to take care of. With six months of experience under her belt, Sushila this
time made USD 650 every month. Nine months later, this woman also died and
Sushila spent the next five and a half years at a vast farm of a 75-year-old
Italian Israeli man. Her starting salary at the farm was USD 750 a month. Every
year, her salary was raised by USD 50. At the time of the man’s death, she was
making USD 1000 monthly, and seven years had passed in Israel. By the time she
left the country, she was making USD 1200 a month. Every time she switched
employers, the most recent one would provide her a sound reference, which,
together with her experience, fetched her higher salary in the subsequent work
places. With the money she earned, Sushila sent her son to school, invested in
a wood warehouse for her husband to run, and built a three-storied house in
Lokanthali in Bhaktapur, just across the Manohora River, not far from where she
used to live.
We
met in this multi-storied house where Sushila reminisced about her days in
Israel. The best times were the five and a half years she spent at the villa of
the dying but highly active Italian-Israeli man. He owned and ran a hotel, and
had acres of land with sheep, horses, dogs, pet rats, rabbits and chicken. His
family was huge and also employed a number of other African workers. Sushila
was hired to look after the man, who had a hole in his throat to breathe
through, but who was proud and loath to accept her help; he instead sent her to
work on the farm, making wine and taking the horses for walks.
Now
36-years-old and back home, Sushila is thinking of getting together with former
caregivers she had met in Israel to open a wine business. She had to return to
Nepal because it was getting harder to renew her work visa. Israel appears to
be following an unofficial policy of making it harder for those who have
already been in the country for seven or more years to get their work permits
renewed.
Taking
chances
The
number of women migrating abroad for work increased significantly not long
after the popular uprising that ended the monarchy and the decade-long civil
war in 2006. In 2006/07, 390 women left for work abroad; this figure soared to
4685 women the following year. The figures rose again after 2010, when the ban
on women under 30 was temporarily lifted. In 2011/12, the number of women
migrating for employment jumped 120 percent compared to the previous year, to
22,958.
We
don’t have bargaining power? Our government has not yet tested its waters.
While
there are as many stories of migration as there are women migrants, experiences
of harrowing exploitation link many of them. Between September and December
2013, the Nepal Embassy in Saudi Arabia rescued 126 women, most under the age
of 30. They had been exploited, economically and sexually, or had had their
passports and salaries confiscated by their employers. Similarly, around 250
housemaids are currently seeking shelter in the Nepal Embassy in Kuwait. 25 of
them fled the shelter in September after the Government of Nepal could not
repatriate them immediately. According to Hom Karki, a Qatar-based reporter for
Kantipur Publications, the high number of women seeking shelter is not
surprising; many are abused or unable to return home as employers hold payments
and refuse to hand over passports and other documents required for an exit
visa. Exploitation comes with the territory, says Karki.
The
Kafala system, which binds migrant labourers to a sponsor (usually their
employer) for the duration of their stay, is widely believed to be responsible
for facilitating the exploitation of migrant construction and domestic workers
in Gulf countries. Stories of passports being confiscated upon arrival are
common but workers are left with little means to seek legal redress, or arrears
in pay as they are tied to their sponsor/employer. Women working as maids or
domestic help are particularly vulnerable to abuse by their employers. Sushila
and her sister were lucky not to know anyone who suffered at the hands of their
employers in Israel or elsewhere.
Seeking
opportunities
There
are various reasons why women in Nepal migrate for work despite the risks, but
absolute poverty is not one of them. Migration requires capital: Sushila paid
NPR 300,000 (USD 3000) to get to Israel and her sister Pramila took a loan of
NPR 450,000 (USD 4500) to join her in 2006. In April 2009, due to the high
recruitment fees that agencies were charging potential recruits – generally
ranging between NPR 400,000 (USD 4000) and 700,000 (USD 7000) – the Israeli
government stopped recruiting caregivers through manpower agencies.
Bandita
Sijapati, from the Centre for Study on Labour and Migration (CESLAM) says women
(or indeed any migrant) are willing to take the risks of going abroad because
of the ‘demonstration effect’. Most migrant workers who return to Nepal use the
sums of money acquired abroad, over a relatively short period of time, to build
a house or business. Nepalis see their neighbours and peers return with enough
capital to secure their futures, build a home or acquire commodities, and so
they follow them; increasingly, women too are going.
Reasons
why women migrate, however, go beyond the demonstration effect; they relate to
economic and social transformations and the impact these have on patriarchal
and traditional family structures. With changing economic and social patterns,
women in Nepal are increasingly required to work outside their homes. Given
this situation, many think they might as well do so abroad, where the pay is
higher. Anecdotal evidence (since official data is lacking), suggests that
women from indigenous janajati communities are more likely to migrate than
women from Madeshi or high-caste Brahmin-Chhettri backgrounds. Single women
with children too are more likely to migrate to provide for their children.
Many other women go abroad because they have an education and no longer want to
work in the fields, while they are not qualified enough to work in positions
higher than domestic help. Sushila, for instance, has a 10th-grade School
Leaving Certificate and was training to become an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife when
she got married and moved to Kathmandu.
I
built this house, but no one here says that I did it. They still say that my
husband built it.
In
spite of the growing trend of female migration, and the potential it holds for
economic and social empowerment, the process of migration for women from Nepal
remains heavily constrained within patriarchal frameworks. Prohibitions such as
the ‘protective’ ban barring women under 30 from working in Gulf countries have
only driven women to use irregular channels to migrate to the Gulf (the ban has
never been written into the law; instead it was issued as a decision of the
cabinet and circulated to the Ministry of Labour and Employment and its
Department of Foreign Employment). Some give the wrong age in passports and
others travel overland to India to fly out from there, as rescued women
receiving shelter in support organisations such as Pourakhi and Maiti Nepal can
tell. These are the women most at risk of being exploited and abused. Yet, they
do not appear in official records and there is no data on exactly how many
women face physical and sexual abuse abroad. According to Manju Gurung of
Pourakhi, the figure is high, but under-reported as most women do not even know
where to look for help or report abuse.
Most
women migrate out of necessity, to secure their own and their families’
futures. While no research links the relation between unequal inheritance laws
and women labour migration, the question has to be asked: Would women migrate
as frequently if they could inherit land and had a better economic support
system in Nepal? Do women with no land to till or business to run migrate
because they have the least to lose?
Bargaining
power?
Some
believe that Nepalis continue to be exploited abroad, especially in the Gulf
countries, because Nepal has no muscle power when it comes to foreign affairs
and diplomacy. Others call this just another excuse to turn a blind eye. “These
countries in the Gulf cannot afford European and North American migrant
labourers. They … don’t want African people in their households. Southeast Asia
and South America are doing well enough that they do not need to send their
citizens to drudge abroad. The only remaining region is Southasia, and we don’t
have bargaining power? Our government has not yet tested its waters,” said
Bandita Sijapati.
Nepal
has signed a memorandum of understanding on labour with only five countries:
Bahrain, Qatar, South Korea, the UAE and Japan. The memorandums acknowledge the
relationship between Nepal and the countries as labour-sending and
labour-receiving nations and formulate ways in which they can work together to
help labourers avoid exploitation in Nepal and the receiving country.
However,
what the increasing number of complaints suggest is that exploitation begins in
Nepal, long before the migrants reach their destination countries, and at the
hands of Nepalis – the agents and agencies, workers in the DOFE, and officials
at Tribhuvan International Airport. Most women, even when they are recruited by
manpower agencies and in theory have access to agents, fly on individual labour
permits – a tactic employed by the agencies to avoid accountability in case
something happens to the worker abroad.
New
futures
Stories
of exploitation aside, women who go abroad despite tremendous social barriers,
come home transformed, with their futures shaped in new ways. Some realise how
stifling patriarchy at home is. “I built this house, but no one here says that
I did it. They still say that my husband built it,” says Sushila, who also
questions the current law on inheritance that bars married daughters from
receiving a share.
Her
sister Pramila, who was just 19 when she left for Israel and had to struggle
the first two years in Israel working at many different homes without being
able to make any money, feels a little defeated. She talks about using her
seven years of experience in Israel to start her own elderly care business in
Nepal. But she also says that if given the opportunity, she might go abroad
again. This poem she wrote while in Israel reflects the feelings of a young
migrant worker abroad:
·
I
wandered everywhere in a place like Israel
Minakshi,
an agent, ate my Dollars
And
I sat hungry, watched hungry from this stifling
lodge
Hoping
for the day this life takes off.
~Weena
Pun is a writer based in Kathmandu.
Source:
himalmag
