The India-Nepal border that had been sealed for the past two months of lockdowns in both countries started to reopen last week, but many have found that their ordeal is not over.
Just on Tuesday, more than 6,000 Nepalis entered Nepal from India through border crossings in western Nepal and another 1,500 in the east. Health check posts were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, and there were not enough COVID-19 kits to test them all.
Families who had entered earlier have been fanning out across the mountains of western Nepal, where they face another roadblock: provincial and municipality governments that have barred their own people from going home without first being tested.
Thousands who had trudged across India after losing their jobs, and waited at the border for two weeks, are now stranded on the outskirts of Surkhet because Karnali Province does not want them in without PCR tests. However, there are not enough kits for the tens of thousands more who are expected here.
Many are hungry and desperate and are being taken care of by volunteers and charity groups. Some, with children in tow, are sneaking past the checkpoints at night.
There are an estimated 2.5 million seasonal Nepali migrants in India, and many could not afford to stay on after losing their jobs. One of them is Hari Sharma from Banke who worked in a hotel in Ahmedabad.
“We we struggling to survive, and heard that the number of cases in Ahmedabad has been rising rapidly. We were hungry and desperate and decided it was better to die in our own country than in a foreign land,” he said.
Along with 10 other room-mates, Hari travelled on 18 May on the Indian government’s Special Shramik Train to Lucknow. These trains have ferried around 3.5 million Indian and Nepali migrant workers across India.
Hari was lucky to get a seat on the train, because many others have walked or hitch-hiked across India to get to the Nepal border. Many others are still stranded in various cities in India.
“We are completely inundated with returning workers from India and trying to coordinate their return to 42 districts where they will be tested locally,” Nepalganj deputy mayor Uma Thapa Magar told Nepali Times by phone, adding there are 3,000 returnees in quarantine in Banke district alone. “It is our duty to test and care for them, but we need a more sensitive government that doesn’t just issue guidelines but provide concrete help.”
The Nepal Labour Force Survey shows that among working age returnee migrant workers in the last five years, most in Karnali and Far-western Provinces were from India. In other five provinces, most returning workers tend to be from the Gulf states or Malaysia.
Districts in the two western provinces will therefore have to brace for a high volume of reverse migration from India, as the Nepal government formulates a delayed repatriation strategy that balances between India-based migrants and workers from other parts of the world, especially the Gulf and Malaysia.
After spending two nights in an old hospital building near the border, where he was also tested for COVID-19, Hari was ferried on a bus to his district in Banke, with around 50 other Nepalis.
“We are now quarantined in a school building for 14 days in my own municipality. It is hot, but otherwise things are okay here,” Hari said over the phone. “They take our temperature daily, and have told us that we will be tested for COVID-19 next week before we are released.”
In Dhangadi, Suresh Khadka is also relieved to have finally reached Nepal from Mumbai where he was working in a hotel. Suresh is lucky because he only had to wait at the border for a day before being allowed in after thermal screening.
He spent four days in a quarantine centre at a school in Dhangadi where he tested negative. He was then sent to his local municipality, where he is again in isolation close to his home, where his family brings him food.
“This is much more convenient, another week and I can be with my family,: he says.
Both Suresh and Hari are uncertain about whether they will return to India or not after things get back to normal. “I have good cooking skills. If the hotel where I worked reopens, they will call me back as I am a trusted employee,” says Hari. “I am also interested in finding a job in the Gulf where I can earn more.”
Some names have been changed.
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