The Nepal government has decided to open three new Consulate General offices in two cities of the United States of America and one in the United Arab Emirates. The government is also going to upgrade the two Consulate General Offices in New York, the US, and Jeddah of Saudi Arabia.

As per the Cabinet decision of Monday, the government approved the salaries for the posts of diplomatic staff, local staff and service staff to be created in these new diplomatic missions.

After getting approval from the government to hire 107 additional permanent staff for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 7 last year, three new consulate general offices are going to be established, while two consulate general offices in New York and Jeddah will be upgraded.

As of now, the consulate general offices in New York and Jeddah are led by under secretaries but with the new decision, these two offices will be led by joint secretaries of the foreign ministry.

The government of United Arab Emirates has given concurrence to set up the Nepali consulate general office in Dubai. However, according to foreign ministry officials, concurrence has been sought with the US government to set up two consulate offices in Dallas and San Francisco. Nepal has one consulate office in New York.

As per the decision to increase the number of staff, the foreign ministry will get one additional post of ambassador, 11 new joint secretaries, 33 under secretaries, 62 section officers, five computer engineers, four non-gazetted officers and 10 drivers; this is estimated to cost additional Rs850 million to the state coffers.

As per the new arrangement, Nepal is going to set up two consulate general offices in Dallas (Texas), San Francisco (California) and Dubai (UAE), said Krishna Prasad Dhakal, the spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The four-man mission will be headed by the joint secretaries of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With this decision, the number of Nepal’s consulate general offices has reached 10. At present, Nepal has consulate general offices in Kolkata (India), Hong Kong, Lhasa (China), New York (USA), Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), Guangzhou (China) and Chengdu (China).

While seven other consulate general offices are run by the joint secretaries from other than the foreign service, these five consulate general offices will be led by the joint secretaries of the foreign ministry.

Nepalis living and working in Dubai, California and Texas have demanded to open a consulate general office to facilitate them in different consular, passports, and document attestations services, among others.

When Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli visited New York in September last year to attend the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, a delegation of Nepali communities living in California including Nepali Janasamparka Samiti and the Nepali Association of Northern California met Oli and Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba and urged them to set up the consulate general office in San Francisco.

The leaders of the Nepali delegation told the prime minister that approximately 100,000 Nepalis residing in California and accessing services from the existing consulate general office in New York or Nepali Embassy in Washington, D.C., has been inconvenient, particularly for passport renewals, and that establishment of a consulate general office in San Francisco would significantly alleviate these challenges.

During the meeting with the members of the Nepali community, Prime Minister Oli pledged to establish the office in California soon.

“We will soon dispatch the officials,” Dhakal said. In the same visit, representatives from various organisations of Nepali community urged Prime Minister Oli to open a consulate general office in Texas as well.

Several Nepali diaspora communities active in Texas were also demanding the establishment of the consulate general office in Dallas which can provide different services like passport renewal, consular services across 15 different US states.

The Nepali diaspora in Texas is large and growing. Nepalis living and working in Texas and 15 other states either have to visit either Washington or New York for services such as passport renewal, document attestation and consular related works. A delegation comprising representatives from various Nepali organisations also met with Prime Minister Oli during the visit and demanded the opening of Nepali consulate general office in Texas in September last year.

After having difficulty for passport renewal, the Nepali Embassy in Washington occasionally runs passport camps in different US cities but the Nepali communities have been complaining that such occasional services don’t fully help them.

Similarly, Nepal is going to set up the new consulate general office in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, which is one of the major destinations for Nepali migrant workers. Since the population of Nepali nationals is increasing in the UAE by the day, it became necessary to diversify the workload of Nepali Embassy in Abu Dhabi, said a senior foreign ministry official.

“About 60 percent of our work loads of the Abu Dhabi-based Nepali Embassy will be reduced once we set up the consulate general office in Dubai,” Nepali Ambassador to UAE Tej Bahadur Chettri told the Post over the phone.

The UAE government has already given the concurrence to set up the consulate general office in Dubai. At present, UAE is one of the most attractive destinations for Nepali migrant workers, Chettri said. “Every month, the UAE is receiving at least 20,000 Nepali nationals to work in different fields,” said the ambassador. “It is believed that more than 600,000 Nepali nationals are currently living and working in the UAE.”

As of today, about 12 percent of the total migrants from Nepal live in the UAE, said the Nepali Embassy in UAE in its website. Likewise, Nepal is one of the most important source countries of foreign labour for the UAE, constituting the fifth largest group of expatriates in this country.

“Nepalis work in the field of security, driving, sales, hospitality, construction, and cleaning, among others,” the notice on the website states. “Provided that Nepal trains and sends the semi-skilled and skilled labour-force in this country, there is lots of demand for Nepali workers for their hard work, sincerity and performance at par excellence in their fields.”

The UAE is the fourth largest source country of remittance income for Nepal, the embassy said.