Impact of COVID 19 on Foreign Returnee Migrant workers in Nepal: A knowledge Attitude and Preference Study in Provinces 2 and 7

Nepal is one of the leading labor exporting countries, with annually out-migration of over four hundred thousand of young adult population
for short-term employment in different parts of the world, with major destination countries are India, Gulf countries, Malaysia, and South
Korea. COVID-19 pandemic at global scale has impacted adversely foreign migrant workers across the countries, large numbers of them
are forced into return to their home country. All of these recent pandemic related development around the globe have very adverse
consequences in socio-economic and livelihood opportunities of Nepalese foreign migrants’ populations working over 100 countries across
the globe. Large numbers of Nepali migrant workers have returned from India, Gulf countries (Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia), and in Malaysiaalso
the major destination countries of Nepali migrant workers.
As per recent estimates from Government of Nepal, more than 600,000 Nepali migrant workers likely to return to their home in Nepal within
a year largely due to the COVID pandemic related factors. In fact, during the period of last nine months, over 500,000 Nepali foreign
migrant workers have already returned to Nepal from India, and other countries in the Gulf region due to the slowdown of the economy in
these destination countries because of the COVID related pandemic across the world.
Large inflow of returnee labor migrants in Nepal will pose a challenge for its reintegration into the country domestic labor markets. When
over 600,000 returnee migrant workers come back in short span of time, and then already job losses are at high level across the sectors in
the country, there is likely to have massive pressure on jobs and employment in the domestic economy, which effects may be there even
years to come. Creation of suitable employment opportunities and job security at home for all of the potential adult workers entering into
the labor markets, plus the returnee migrant workers of about 600,000 in a year, will be a great challenge for the government. In this regard,
selection of specific schemes in self-employment or wage employment (either in agriculture or non-agriculture sectors) is critically
important.
So far, almost all policy makers have considered that agriculture sector will absorb all of the added numbers of returning migrant workers
from India and from the third countries. Moreover, it is not known definitely whether the returnee foreign migrant workers will be interested
to engage again in farming sector for their employment and livelihoods, when they have left the farming activities here long back, and have
gone abroad for other non-agricultural sector employment? In that circumstances, there is no clear understanding among the concerned
policy makers and planners on what alternate policy measures and interventions to be taken in the domestic labor markets to provide
adequate employment opportunity and income generation for absorption of additional labor forces in this year and for couple of years down
the road.