Passports go missing; employment agencies fear they’ll be misused

Over 200 passports of Nepali migrant workers, most of which with work visa for Saudi Arabia, disappeared under mysterious circumstances while they were being brought back to the country from Bangladesh on February 8. 
The owner of recruiting agency Memorial Overseas, Lok Prasad Aryal, had been carrying the passports sent by nine manpower companies. Work visas for Saudi Arabia are stamped in Bangladesh in the absence of the Gulf country’s embassy in Nepal.
“They (passports) were in my luggage when I boarded a Biman Bangladesh plane for Kathmandu. However, they were not there by the time I arrived at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu,” Aryal told the Post over telephone from Bangladesh.
He said there were around 110 passports with visas, 25 without them and 60 driving licences. 
To save extra costs, manpower agencies usually assign one specific person to take the passport back to the country after they are stamped.
Two of the nine manpower agencies in question—World Wide Manpower Agency and KL International—have claimed that at least three individuals have entered Saudi Arabia with the lost passports.
“We have confirmed that two individuals have entered Saudi with the lost passports processed by our agency,” Pushpa Bhandari, the owner of World Wide International, told the Post over telephone from Dhaka. According to him, trans-national human traffickers may have got hold of the passports and that they used them to smuggle Bangladeshis to Saudi Arabia.
The other lost passports were processed by Memorial Overseas Services, Nabil Overseas, Meridian Overseas, Oxford Management System Pvt Ltd, Friendship Manpower Cosultancy, Equator International and Al-Summit Manpower.
Manpower agencies claim the human traffickers pay around Rs 150,000 for a Nepali passport. They said they have often found that those passports with visas had been sold to Bangladeshi nationals for 600,000 taka (over Rs 600,000).
Nepal police have arrested over 100 Bangladeshi nationals in the past few months for misusing Nepali passports. 
According to the police, foreign nationals with criminal records tend to steal passports of different nations and different routes.
Aryal has not informed the Nepali mission in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Foreign Employment of the lost passports. 
“I have informed only the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) of the matter. I will inform all the offices concerned by Sunday,” said Aryal. 
NAFEA Chairman Bal Bahadur Tamang said the passports could have been misused, mainly by Bangladeshi nationals.
“During my recent visit to Bangladesh, I found it very insecure carrying passports with me, as there have been incidents when people have been robbed of the documents while the passports have later found to be misused. 
“Nepal’s foreign employment industry could land in deep trouble if Nepali passports are misused,” Tamang said. He added that he has informed senior police officials and secretaries of the dangers of such a thing happening.
Acting chief of the passport division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yadav Khanal, said they usually receive complaints of a few passports getting lost. 
“So far, we have not heard of anyone losing so many passports at one go. There might be some bad intention here. We will look into the matter,” he said.

Posted by Dee-Peena on Friday, February 22, 2013. Filed under News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry