Nepalis working abroad have faced multiple problems over the years. The hassles start from their homeland where the foreign employment agencies charge them hefty sums just to connect with prospective employers. Many migrant workers reach the destination country only to find that the jobs on offer were vastly different to those promised to them earlier. Lack of workplace safety, overwork, underpay and exploitation at workstations are common problems faced by hundreds of thousands of Nepali migrant workers.

Now, a new form of exploitation of Nepali migrants has emerged. Recruiters and middlemen have started duping Nepali youths with the promise of lucrative IT jobs. Many of them are coerced into cybercrimes. According to rescued Nepalis, such cybercrime hubs, which might be located anywhere in West Asia or Southeast Asia, force them to scam customers online. Once they enter the workplace, they cannot escape as their passports are confiscated upon arrival. They are trained in tricks like building fake online romantic relationships to convince people to buy cryptocurrency or deposit money. Many Nepali migrant workers have already been punished for their involvement in such illegal work. Earlier this month, Oman deported 20 Nepalis. These people had entered Dubai on visit visas, having been promised IT jobs by a Chinese company, and were then brought to Oman.

As fraudsters and traffickers have shifted focus from traditional to online-based crimes, it has become urgent for a country like Nepal, a major source of migrant workers, to prepare to tackle such digital-based frauds.

First, Nepal has to raise these issues with the destination countries and ensure that Nepali migrant workers don’t fall prey to such criminal elements. Many of these recruitments can be stopped through thorough vetting of prospective employers. Primarily, this should be the job of the manpower agencies, and those who fail in this must be brought to book.

These are grave crimes. The UN Human Rights Office report ‘Online scam operations in South-East Asia as sites of trafficking in persons’ say such scam centres are modern-day slavery camps. Workers are trafficked, confined, beaten, and forced to scam global users via online gambling, cryptocurrency, and romantic conversations. The report states that workers forced to operate inside such areas fall under international definitions of trafficking victims.

Again, this kind of trickery of Nepali migrant workers is not new. In May 2023, 69 Nepalis were rescued from scam hubs in the Philippines, along with 1,137 other foreign workers. Nepalis with IT skills, previously trapped in cybercrime in Myanmar, Cambodia, and the Philippines, are now increasingly becoming victims of such crimes in the Gulf.

Nepal has signed labour agreements with a dozen of countries so far. In view of the changed context, these agreements need to be updated. According to the official record, at least 2.16 million Nepalis were working abroad as of 2021. As many Nepalis go abroad through unofficial channels, the actual number could be much larger. With a large section of the population staying and working in foreign countries, it has become imperative to enhance the capacity of Nepali embassies and other missions abroad so that they can better deal with these emerging challenges. That is the least the Nepali state could do for its migrant workers, the lifeblood of its economy.