Ujwal Thapa

We get around US$3.5 billion from remittance per year. Compare this with only US$500 million or so of investment from foreigners (about 1/7th). Yet we treat this group like third-class humans.

A Nepali returns from “Arab” for a month to meet his family after two years. He lands at the Tribhuvan International Airport at night. He is first put in a long line of Nepalis interrogated by officials. The customs officer scans his bags like a vulture looking for an excuse to extort on the presents bought for his family. Mentally drained, he finally comes out. The taxis outside are waiting for him. They demand, “Give us Rs 1,500 to go to Gongabu (bus station).” This is more than what he spends on the bus ride from Kathmandu to his village. He sighs and pays up. After only three weeks with his family, he is forced to run to Kathmandu to get a new passport. He waits out in long lines, in heat, pollution and stench. On his way back to Arab, he is humiliated again at the airport. As he boards the plane, he breathes a sigh of relief. He won’t be back for another two years.

Is this how you treat a community that pumps US$3.5 billion into the Nepali economy every year? So how could we serve this group well, and make this a win-win experience?

Here’s a start.

Let’s start with the government
Remove regulations! Demand insurance from manpower agencies so that all Nepalis who work abroad have insurance to protect themselves. At the Ministry of Foreign Relations, make a special fast-track application process. Handle all their official works within half a day.

Enable issuance of passports from districts easier. Make a special VIP line at our airport exclusively for them. Make them feel they are the reasons our country isn’t bankrupt. Show pre-departure videos on what life will be like outside Nepal, what their rights and responsibilities are.

Teach them how to contact the nearest Nepali embassy or consulates.

Work to change your official’s habits to deal with them like they do with “kuhires.” Work with a private company with excellent customer service credentials to provide reliable, direct transportation from Kathmandu Airport to other major towns.

Manpower companies
Start providing cheap, affordable insurance for every worker you send abroad. Offer it in installments. You can surely make a profit by the volume.

Social workers
Train their families in skills like sewing, knitting, running a small shop, etc. Do advise them on ways to protect the money they send home. Wasting it on a big LCD television in a14-hour electricity outage Nepal isn’t ideal, is it?

Entrepreneurs
Interact more with this group! Understand through them their families’ problems. Then build an opportunity to fix their common pains.

Financial institutions
Prioritize their families! Advise them on investments and entrepreneurial opportunities through your institution. These are safe earners who send money back home regularly - many of them probably through your bank.

Maybe even offer high interest bond instruments to them to purchase that yields in five years. You have an enviable opportunity here.

Look to implement their ideas in Nepali industries to improve efficiency, safety and quality. Remember, these Nepalis are building the next-generation World Cup stadiums in Qatar by 2020.

Ultimately, this becomes a win-win fun for all.

Imagine the same humiliated Nepali returning home in two years. He walks out of the airport and goes through a fast-track service counter to have his paperwork processed. He’s warmly welcomed by an airport official who wishes him a pleasant stay with his family.

Our arrival then is directed to a counter inside the airport to purchase a ticket to go home to his town. He’s escorted to a direct express bus outside the airport that’s taking him and 50 others like him. He directly goes home without the hassles of Kathmandu and spends quality time with his family.

To renew his passport, he goes to his local administrative office and gets a new passport in one hour flat.

He’s happy to be home. With the money he was sending home and the installments he was paying, he now has a better house; his wife runs a small store through a loan from the bank she visited to get her husband’s remittance money.

With the savings this man was making with the bank, he now has a high-interest bond that’ll yield high returns, starting next year. With this money and his new-found skills in the Arab world, the man wonders: Must I go back to the 50-degree heat in Arab? He further wonders: With a good house, working wife, money in the bank and my new-found skills, maybe I can start a small factory here in Nepal, what!

Only when we learn to treat our own US$3.5 billion customer/earner with dignity, will the world invest in Nepal.

How we treat our remittance workers tells them how we treat other “investors” as well. If they don’t like what they see, they will invest their money someplace else where people respect “investors.”

Published on: 6 April 2011 | Republica