South Asia News
Stress gets most of blame for 200 Nepalese deaths in Qatar per year
Jan 4, 2011, 6:51 GMT
Kathmandu - About 200 Nepalese migrant workers die in Qatar every year with stress said to contribute to a majority of the deaths, media in the Himalayan country said Tuesday.
Heart attacks, suicide, industrial accidents and drowning were the causes of the deaths in a country that hosts 350,000 Nepalese workers, according to a report prepared by the Nepalese embassy in the Gulf nation based on information gathered from Qatar hospitals.
'Two-third of the deaths are caused by stress because they are cheated by employment agencies,' Nepalese Ambassador Suryanath Mishra said.
Mishra said his embassy receives about 20 complaints each day from Nepalese victims of such fraud and that about 10 Nepalese return to their home country each day from Qatar because of such scams.
From 2007 to 2010, 745 Nepalese migrant workers died in Qatar, 297 in 2009 alone.
Nepal is a large exporter of labour. About 800 Nepalese leave the country every day to seek employment abroad, and more than 90 per cent of them head to Gulf countries, according to employment agencies in Kathmandu.
Foreign remittances contribute up to 25 per cent of Nepal's gross domestic product, according to the research journal Critical Asian Studies. Government authorities put the figure at 13 per cent.
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