The body of a Nepali migrant worker has remained in Saudi Arabia for the past one-and-a-half months due to government apathy.

Man Bahadur Pun of Sorhawa in Bardiya, who had been suffering from jaundice since long, died in the Gulf country on July 18. According to his co-worker Arjun Chaudhary, Pun had gone to sleep after talking to his family members in Nepal over the phone but was found dead on his bed the following morning.

Though Pun’s wife Bishnumaya, who is an illiterate, has been forced to run from pillar to post requesting the concerned government agencies to help her bring back the body of her husband for final rites, her efforts so far have failed to yield any results. After repeated visits to Rapid International, the Kathmandu-based foreign employment agency through which Pun had flown to Saudi Arabia, Bishnumaya received assurances that the company will help her bring the body back soon.

“But when I phone the manpower official, he rarely answers me. When he does, he tells me that the process of bringing the body is not easy and disconnects the phone without listening to what I have to say,” she said.

A farmer by profession, Pun was earning a respectable living. Bishnumaya claims that her husband had been duped by a manpower agent who promised to get him a lucrative job as a bulldozer driver in Saudi Arabia. After selling off his tractor at Rs 90,000, taking loan from a co-operative and putting Bishnumaya’s jewellery as collateral at a jewellery shop for Rs 45,000, Pun had flown to the Gulf state with the dream of well-paying job. However, upon reaching the country, he was neither provided the promised job nor the agreed salary. According to Bisnumaya, Pun had told her that instead of the agreed salary of 1,800 Riyals, he had had to work as a labourer for 1,200 Riyals.

After Pun’s death, the responsibility of raising their three daughters and parents—Khim Bahadur, 70, and Bishnu Kumari, 65—has fallen upon her shoulders.

Published on: 3 September 2014 | The Kathmandu Post