At the height of the corona infection in the first week of May, the same news was coming from hospitals across the country - extreme lack of oxygen, death of the infected. The death graph was rising as the pressure of patients increased in the hospital due to the inability of the existing health system. It was like a flood of death, a state of helplessness.
While the atmosphere seemed to be filled with pleas and pleas, a cool news came from the Gulf. The first series of news was: 560 oxygen cylinders coming to Nepal from Kuwait. Within a few days, the cylinders bought by the sweat of the Gulf workers arrived in Nepal. They were not just oxygen cylinders, they were the lifeblood of those who were dying due to lack of a handful of oxygen. It was heartbreaking news for those who left their loved ones in the ICU and ran lazily in search of oxygen.
Few of us remember, who were the buyers of such cylinders? What motivated him to send oxygen cylinders to Nepal when Nepal was in the throes of a deep health crisis and the labor-destination countries were plagued by corona infections?
It is on the same day that the workers collected the drops of sweat and sent the oxygen cylinders. Some small leaders, fed up with the extreme hunger for propaganda, quenched their hunger by sticking their names on the cylinders from the donors! From the hospital bed to the cabin of the ICU, the dirty politics of the source force is scattered!
In the first week of July, another report came from the Martyr Shukraraj Tropical and Communicable Diseases Hospital in Teku, Kathmandu. They have been forced to migrate even in the midst of Corona-Kahar without seeing the possibility of employment in the country. At midnight there was hardly a state to understand their grief.
This was not the first time workers had lined up at the hospital for hours. Even when the first wave of Corona reached its climax, they stayed up all night in the courtyard of the same government hospital to have their PCR tested. The difference was that those workers were the ones who were working in the country, these workers were preparing to go abroad to work hard. Both had a common sense of the state's cyclical behavior. Between the fatigue and restlessness of standing in line for hours, the voice of their anger was suppressed somewhere.
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The next day, 24 bodies and 3 items of Nepali workers who died in Malaysia arrived in Kathmandu. For weeks after the news of the death spread, family members and loved ones were sitting in a corner of the Tribhuvan Airport counting the minutes and seconds since morning. The grief of death had so overwhelmed them that they did not even have time to ask the cause of death of a loved one who had gone abroad to earn a living. Why the government could not bring the body on time? Under the thick cloud of mourning, how much did the whole family get restless for weeks? They hardly had the strength to say anything like that. Who created the situation where you have to whisper to yourself that at least the corpse came even though it was late? The question was lost in the thick air of mourning hovering over a corner of the airport.
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The above three scenarios that have emerged in the last three months clearly show how the state is treating migrant workers and what migrant workers are trying to do for the country. What are the workers of a remittance-dependent economy getting from the state? Labor stickers after hours of queuing, discriminatory treatment at the only international airport, and the tasteful language of the staff of the diplomatic mission in the labor destination country and the taste of the Guinness Book of World Records!
In return, their remittances have driven the market of a large rural and semi-urban part of Nepali society. How can a Nepali work abroad if he is satisfied with cheap labor and knowing that the government cannot deliver his body to his family in time even if he dies unfortunately? How did they cope with every disaster in their homeland?
Earthquake aftershocks do occur from time to time, but have we forgotten the hope that migrant workers sent after the quake? Did we forget that our artists returned to the Gulf and Malaysia with concerts or programs, carrying happiness in their pockets? When someone is sick, do we remember the news that they sent money?
If we have not forgotten why migrant workers have to stand in line from midnight to get the vaccination certificate against corona? Even though we have forgotten, time is remembering how the workers working in India in the second wave, like in the first wave of Corona, were lazy by being detained at the border! How their surviving self-esteem and enthusiasm for survival was shattered!
Suffering from amnesia, we tend to forget the past, not to mention the recent past. If we keep it, the above three different scenarios seen in the middle of three months will burn our minds. Should someone be seen coming forward with a voice of sympathy?
What is the matter with the communists who are scattering the ashes of war in each other's homes? Even the honorable members of the Congress, who came to power after the situation was resolved, could not be heard spending a minute in a public forum. Whether issuing a statement in favor of Venezuela or rushing to make an industrialist a minister, everyone is missing out on their own ledger.
In the last decade of political ups and downs, the average ratio of remittance inflows to GDP has been 25 percent. To everyone's surprise, so many young people had lined up in Teku since midnight to support the domestic economy. Migrant Nepalis who sent 209 billion remittances in the fiscal year 2065-66 had sent 879 billion remittances in the fiscal year 2075-76. What did they get in return? What are they getting?
Political parties in the Gulf countries have liaison forums. Do those sitting on the platform speak for the midnight support line, for dozens of corpses piled up in the Gulf for months, or for the workers who have been stranded for days on end? Perhaps the remote control of their speech is in the hands of those who were involved in the ugly game of Corona. It is a well-known fact that he spent the rest of his time taking his children home or taking turns vaccinating them or putting them to bed in the hospital.
Many government reports have written about the significant improvement in Nepal's social and human development indices, including poverty reduction, due to the recession. Most of us are aware of the fact that 30.9 percent of the population living below the poverty line in the fiscal year 2060-62 fell to 18.7 percent in the fiscal year 2074-75 due to remittances. This remittance factor seems to be the reason behind the UN's goal of reducing Nepal's absolute poverty line to single digits by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.
