The coronavirus pandemic is hitting migrant workers hard. 22-year-old Raju Parajuli lost his job overnight in the United Arab Emirates and had to return home to Nepal. He fears that the family will have to mortgage the house so that he can afford to travel again. Wood harvesting is part of everyday life at home. Photo: Kishor Budhathoki
800 million people worldwide benefit from income from a family member who works abroad. Now the corona pandemic is taking a stranglehold on the money flows.
Kalpana Bhattarai (Katmandu) og Asle Olav Rønning (Oslo)
The house consists of clay and bricks and is located in the Mahottari district in southeastern Nepal.
An oven outside shows that the family who lives there is cooking their food outdoors. They have to, since six people share the only room in the house. Narendra Sarwariya is the family’s main breadwinner. He lives there with his wife Gita, three daughters and a son.
In recent months, Sarwariya has been working at a small wood products factory not far away, but what he earns from the work is not enough.
He has managed to get his son a job as a helper at the same factory. The son is only 16 years old and had to quit school due to the difficult financial situation the family is in.
Cleaning on planes in Saudi Arabia
Before the corona pandemic struck, Sarwariya worked as a cleaner in Saudi Arabia. The work consisted of keeping the planes at King Abdulaziz Airport in the city of Jeddah clean. He earned around NOK 2500 a month, and could send money home every other month.
Today, the family only manages to earn around NOK 1400 a month. It is only barely enough to feed the family and pay school fees for the daughters, who are 15, 13 and 8 years old.
Many families in Nepal have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 forcing migrant workers to return home. Migrant workers also mean a lot to the country’s economy. Nepal is dependent on the money that migrants send home from abroad.
According to the World Bank, in the year before the pandemic struck, this amounted to NOK 72 billion, or 23 per cent of Nepal’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Lost his job overnight
Sarwariya traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2018. This meant that the family had to borrow money from a local landowner. The house and land were mortgaged to obtain the necessary NOK 9000 for plane tickets, payment to intermediaries and medical examinations.
In Saudi Arabia, Sarwariya lived with 15 other Nepalese workers in a room provided by his employer. After paying the expenses, there was still some left to save and send home. These transfers were just enough to pay the family’s expenses and interest on the loan. By the beginning of 2020, Sarwariya had managed to send home around NOK 13,000.
But suddenly everything changed. When the corona pandemic broke out, Saudi authorities shut down the country and all flights to and from Saudi Arabia were stopped. Sarwariya lost his job at the airport.
He decided to go home, but there were no planes to take him to Kathmandu.
“For almost seven months, I survived on bread and water,” says Sarwariya.
– I felt so bad. I had no idea what was going to happen and there was nothing I could do. I knew that my family was worried about me, and that they were also suffering because there was no income.
The father of the family says that he was so distraught that he considered committing suicide, but the thought of his wife and children prevented him.
“Even our mattresses were taken, and we had to sleep on the floor.”
Raju Parajuli (22), migrant worker
Home without an ear in your pocket
At the beginning of August, Nepalese authorities allowed flights into Kathmandu, but those who wanted to return home had to pay dearly for the flight.
Relatives were able to send him money and the Nepalese embassy in the United Arab Emirates contributed some support. This allowed Sarwariya to pay for the plane ticket and for the hotel in Kathmandu, where he had to be quarantined.
– When I checked out of that hotel, it was without a red ear in my pocket, he says.
Now the loan the family took out to cover the trip to Saudi Arabia is a big burden. There is still just under NOK 4000 left. Interest and instalments are a major challenge.
“I have no idea how I’m going to manage it,” says Sarwariya, who fears that it will all end with the landowner taking over the house.
Then the family is left with no place to live and the future, not least for the children, looks bleak.
“This pandemic has made my life impossible,” he says sadly.
First earthquake, then corona
Raju Parajuli from the Sindhupalchok district near the border with China had just started his job in the United Arab Emirates when the pandemic hit. He worked for a pharmaceutical company in Abu Dhabi, where there were also about 400 other Nepalese migrant workers.
The 22-year-old says that the company refused to provide food and shelter for the workers while they waited to return home in June 2020.
– Even our mattresses were taken, and we had to sleep on the floor. But my biggest concern was how I was going to get home and what I was going to do then.
As the eldest son of the family, it is his responsibility to provide for a mother, brother, and sister. Parajuli lost his father when he was only 14 years old.
The massive earthquake that hit Nepal in 2015 and killed 9000 people also destroyed their house. His home district was among the areas hardest hit by the earthquake.
Indebted to money lender
Parajuli is now without a job, and says that the family is barely surviving. He borrowed just over NOK 10,000 from a local moneylender to be able to take the job abroad.
– I don’t even have the money to pay the interest. Every single day is despairing. The moneylender is after me,” says Parajuli.
– And now I can’t support my family either. Even getting food has become a challenge. Life has become hell,” he says.
Parajuli longs for the day the crisis is over. He says that his only hope is that the pharmaceutical company in the United Arab Emirates will take him back in when the pandemic is under control.
– But even if they do, how am I going to get there? he asks frustrated.
The solution may then be to secure money to travel out again by mortgaging the house that the family with a lot of hard work rebuilt after the earthquake.
Unable to get enough jobs
Nepalese authorities lack a full overview of how many Nepalese foreign workers have lost their jobs due to the corona pandemic.
According to data from the Corona Crisis Management Center (CCMC), a unit of Nepal’s Ministry of Interior, about 259,000 Nepalese migrant workers have returned home during the period from August 2020 to January 2021.
The authorities say that the number of Nepalis working abroad has been reduced by almost 80 percent.
When the Nepalese Communist Party formed a government in February 2018, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli promised that within five years, no Nepalese youth would have to travel abroad to find work.
Two years later, however, when the pandemic hit, nearly 1.5 million Nepalese youths had gone abroad as migrant workers, according to official figures. Every year, half a million young Nepalis enter the labour market, and many of them have to leave the country to look for work.
Fears sharp decline
Nepal is just one of many low- and middle-income countries that depend on migrant workers to travel abroad and send money home. In low- and middle-income countries, transfers from migrant workers amounted to NOK 4820 billion in 2019, according to calculations from the World Bank. This is more than three times as much as all public aid from the world’s richest countries.
The answer is not clear, but the World Bank estimated last autumn that the coronavirus pandemic would mean a seven percent decrease in transfers from migrants to low- and middle-income countries in 2020. The forecast indicated a further decline in 2021. The total loss spread over two years is NOK 1000 billion spread over two years, or 26 Norwegian aid budgets.
However, the global figures are uncertain. They include groups as diverse as Nepalese migrant workers in oil-rich Gulf states, Central American migrant workers in the United States, migrants from Zimbabwe and other African countries finding work in South Africa, and many others.
Uncertain estimates
All of these groups are affected in different ways by the pandemic situation and the state of the economy in the individual country where they are located. Some have the opportunity to travel and cross borders, others do not. Therefore, the figures are uncertain.
– During the corona pandemic, it is more difficult to trust global estimates than otherwise. How much the pandemic has affected has fluctuated a lot over the past year. This makes it more difficult than ever to calculate the effects,” says researcher and migration expert Jørgen Carling at the Peace Research Institute PRIO.
The coronavirus pandemic is likely to lead to a marked increase in poverty in many low- and middle-income countries. The money that migrants against all odds still manage to send home during the corona pandemic may therefore be more important than ever.
