With a heavy heart, 62-year-old Kami Sherpa of Gorakhani-2, Solukhumbu District returned to her village on Saturday after cremating her daughter Chhoki Sherpa, whose body was brought back to Nepal six months after her death.

"I cannot believe it was suicide, as the bruises on the body and other signs don't match the medical report dispatched along with the body and the claims made over the phone by the house owner in Lebanon for whom Chhoki had worked," she said before leaving for her village with her seventh-grader grandson Phuri.

The owner of the house where 36-year-old Chhoki had worked as a housemaid for two years informed the Sherpa family on 23rd September that she had committed suicide, or two months after the incident.

"I have nowhere to turn to over my plight, no courage to ask questions about my daughter's death even if it was murder," lamented Kami Sherpa.

While the suicide rate among Nepali migrant workers has risen more than 10 percent every year, the government here has not called for any probe into reported suicides. According to Dipak Adhikari, Acting Director General of the Department of Consular Services, the department has been frequently questioned by kin and other stakeholders over the reports dispatched along with the bodies of those who die abroad.

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Kami Sherpa, 62, with her grandson Phuri Sherpa, 13, at Balaju after cremating her daughter last week.

"We have no alternative to believing the medical reports submitted because autopsies carried out weeks and months later cannot provide an accurate picture," he said, adding that the medical report accompanying Chokki Sherpa's body mentions severe blue and black on the face, slight swelling in the middle of the forehead, fractures on the back right of the skull, and that the body was lying on the ground. The family was told that Sherpa hanged herself.

Some 3,424 Nepali migrant workers, including a surprising number of women, have been reported dead in the past five years, and of these 376 committed suicide, according to statistics provided by the Foreign Employment Promotion Board. Saudi Arabia is the country where the most number of Nepali migrant workers die.

A majority of the deaths are due to cardiac arrest, traffic accidents, work place accidents, murder and suicide, and many of the incidents go unidentified and unreported, according to the Board.

The death rate has risen steadily despite the government's passage of a law related to higher standards for worker protection and greater awareness, according to officials.

Acting Director General Adhikari said, "The lack of strict measures against illegal recruiters and the tendency of workers to opt for short cuts to grab lucrative jobs are the prime causes behind the hazard they face."

Unless the migrant workers enjoy full protection and benefits as accorded them under the law, the kind of apathy that Chhoki Sherpa's death has met with is sure to continue, he said.

Expressing serious dissatisfaction over the bureaucratic hassles involved in bringing home their dead, Wangchu Sherpa, a kin of the dead woman, said Nepalis consider receiving their dead an achievement in itself.

Published on: 17 March 2015 | Republica