A woman demands rehabilitation of women who suffer abuse during foreign employment.
KATHMANDU, NEPAL – Pema Lama, 18, went abroad in good health in August 2010 to be a domestic worker in Kuwait, a country on the Persian Gulf, she says. But 20 months later, she returned with kidney and autoimmune diseases.
Clad in jeans and a brown jacket with her hair tied back, Lama shows her doctor’s prescription from her routine checkups.
“So many medicines have been prescribed, and I have taken them all,” Lama says. “I am not sure at all if I will be healthy again. I wish I could just die.”
When she was 16 years old, she decided that, like many of her classmates, she wanted to leave school and her small village just northeast of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, to work abroad.
Her parents, who survived on a meager income from farming, encouraged her with the hope that their lives would improve, she says. Her neighbors loaned her 40,000 rupees ($460) to pay for her foreign employment placement and airfare.
She flew to Kuwait with the aid of a local employment agent, she says. The agent encouraged her when she applied for her passport to illegally claim to be 20 years old, an age more appealing to potential employers.
“With the hope of fulfilling my dreams, I left my studies and migrated abroad on fake documents,” Lama says.
She started working for a family of four in Kuwait, cleaning the house and caring for the children. After medical reports confirmed her health five days later, she started working in the kitchen.
“I woke up at 5 in the morning and worked till 11 at night, like a machine,” Lama says.
Her employers also paid her less than the contracted amount, she says. She gave her salary to an older Nepalese female worker in the neighborhood for safekeeping. When her employer’s wife found out, she kicked and slapped Lama.
“Due to constant agony, I cried a lot every day, and I lost [my] appetite to eat food,” she says.
Although she felt culturally isolated in Kuwait, she was not allowed to call her parents, she says.
“There were so many things in my mind to give vent to,” Lama says. “I felt suffocated. As I couldn’t understand the language, I felt that a heavy stone was pressing my heart.”
She also could not speak to the building’s landlord about the problems with her employers, she says.
“I wanted to tell my problems to the landlady,” she says. “But because of [the] language barrier, I had to bear everything in silence.”
She developed frequent headaches and a burning sensation in her hands and feet, she says. She fell down the stairs one day after becoming dizzy while cleaning the house’s windows and walls. Her back hurt because she stood the whole day, and her feet started to swell. Every morning, she craved for night, when she could go to bed.
“I was scolded and beaten if I was ever seen taking rest,” she says with moist eyes.
When her health condition prevented her from working, her employer took her to the doctor, but she could not understand the staff, Lama says. Soon, her employer sent her home in April 2012.
“Gradually my health worsened, and soon I was bedridden,” she says. “When I couldn’t work, my employer packed me off to Nepal without giving the due monthly salary.”
When she returned to Nepal, doctors diagnosed her with kidney disease and systemic lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disease.
But she could not pay for her medical treatment because she spent the 70,000 Nepalese rupees ($810) that she had saved from Kuwait repaying her loans and covering her mother’s medical treatment, she says.
Then in November 2012, she discovered Pourakhi, a nongovernmental organization in Kathmandu that provides medical and psychological care to sick or hurt returnees.
Pourakhi means “self-reliant” in Nepali.
The organization is helping her to pay all her medical expenses, Lama says.
“How else could I afford 6,000 rupees [$70] every month?” she asks.
Illiteracy, poverty and a lack of employment opportunities compel Nepalese women to work abroad, but they often return home with lasting physical and mental injuries. Their families view their health issues as burdens and sometimes abandon them. Women who work abroad illegally are especially vulnerable to abuse because they forgo government training and support services. The government introduced age requirements for foreign employment in 2012 to better protect women, but some argue this has increased the number of women who work abroad illegally. To prevent this, nongovernmental organizations educate women about the potential dangers, and the government increasingly monitors fake documents and foreign employment trainings.
The number of Nepalese women who attained permission to work abroad legally with the approval of the Ministry of Labour and Employment more than doubled during the past two fiscal years, according to the Department of Foreign Employment.
But the government cannot track the number of women who migrate through illegal channels, which large numbers of women do, says Tika Prasad Bhandari, the director of the government’s Foreign Employment Promotion Board.
An estimated 2.5 million Nepalese women work abroad, out of which 90 percent are undocumented, according to Women’s Rehabilitation Centre, an organization that promotes and protects human rights in Nepal.
People work abroad because it helps them to make ends meet, Bhandari says.
“Because of illiteracy, poverty and the lack of opportunities of employment, people are compelled to choose foreign employment to meet their basic needs,” he says.
But when women work abroad, they face physical and mental challenges and often come home with lasting injuries, he says.
Women working abroad may suffer physical injuries from assault, sexual abuse, gastric disorders from starving, broken limbs from workplace accidents, diseases and swollen feet, says Satra Kumari Gurung, a senior professional nurse and secretary at Pourakhi.
Women who work abroad also suffer psychological damage, Gurung says. Pourakhi has provided medical help to more than 400 female domestic workers from 2003 to 2012. Mental distress has plagued most of them.
“The main reason for the mental problem is culture shock,” Gurung says. “The difference in the social and cultural life, food and dressing habits, language barrier, sexual violence and lower salary than promised earlier by the agent are some of the reasons.”
When these women return home with mental and physical troubles, families view them as burdens and sometimes abandon them.
Lama, who is still undergoing medical treatment thanks to Pourakhi, says her family considers her to be a burden.
Khim Kumari B.K., 29, from Lamjung, a district about 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of Kathmandu, says her family also views her as a burden since she returned from working abroad.
“Whatever I had earned was spent on repaying the loan incurred on travel abroad,” B.K. says tearfully. “Now, how do I meet the expenses? I have become a burden to myself.”
After her husband died in 2010, she left her two children with her parents and, through illegal channels in India, started working in Kuwait that same year, she says.
But her employer sent her back to Nepal after she had a mental breakdown in 2012. She says this occurred because her employer mentally and physically tortured her. She now lives in Pourakhi’s shelter because of her mental condition and lack of family support. She sits in Pourakhi’s office, murmuring to herself.
The Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu treated B.K. for three months, says Muna Gautam, a supervisor at Pourakhi. And although B.K. has mostly recovered, health care professionals are unsure whether she will fully heal.
“It is not known whether she would ever get back to her previous self,” she says.
Members at Pourakhi have tried contacting B.K.’s relatives without any luck, Gautam says.
“Her relatives might have assumed that they will have to bear financial burden if they ever contact her,” she says. “Even our repeated calls were in vain.”
B.K. needs family support to get through her current difficulties, Gautam says.
“In order to revive mental balance,” she says, “good family environment, love, support and positive behavior of others are required. On the contrary, her own family takes her as a burden. It is hard for the patient to get well under such [an] adverse situation.”
B.K. says she hopes to see her children soon.
Women who work abroad illegally miss the government’s mandatory orientation that prepares them for their employment, Bhandari says. This could leave them more vulnerable to health issues.
Women working abroad through official channels and work permits must attend a government-designed orientation executed by private agencies, says Diwas Acharya, the director of the Department of Foreign Employment, in a telephone interview.
The orientation teaches workers about their host countries’ lifestyles and trains them in their future work, he says. It also informs them about places to seek help and educates them on the government’s insurance compensation of 150,000 rupees ($1,660) in case of accidents or death.
Without this training, women are not prepared to work abroad and do not have adequate support when facing problems, including lack of compensation, communication barriers, culture shock, strenuous work, long hours, and, in some cases, violence that results in psychological and physical injuries, Bhandari says.
“Those who migrate through illegal channels are not aware about these provisions and are therefore victimized,” he says.
To better protect women working abroad from these physical and mental abuses, the Nepalese government introduced restrictions on foreign employment in 2012.
All foreign workers face threats of physical and mental abuse, Bhandari says. But because females are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and distressful situations, the government introduced an age restriction in August 2012 permitting only women older than 30 to work as foreign laborers in Persian Gulf nations.
The government maintains that women who are older than 30 can make better decisions in abusive situations, Bhandari says. Nepalese women who are 18 years or older are still eligible to work in other countries.
But the government’s policy has not discouraged younger women from seeking work in Persian Gulf countries, Gurung says. Instead, it has increased the number of women seeking employment illegally.
“Foreign employers think that women over 30 are not capable to work as domestic workers,” she says. “Therefore, there is increasing demand of women of the lower age group.”
The Foreign Employment Promotion Board established safe houses in 2010 and 2011 in four Gulf countries that provide health services for foreign workers, including rescues, medical treatment, repatriation and rehabilitation, Bhandari says. The government also provides counseling and general health treatment in government hospitals for women who work abroad legally.
The government randomly monitors private training centers to make sure they provide quality orientation programs, Acharya says. It is also improving its own employee training to detect fake documentation in airports to prevent women from working abroad illegally.
Nongovernmental organizations also promote women’s awareness about the dangers of illegal travel and health concerns, says Rupa Shrestha, the program officer at the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre.
“We request them to go abroad only after becoming aware of the legal process,” she says.
Interviews were conducted in Nepali.
