Kathmandu, March 4: Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Arzu Rana Deuba asserted that a big chunk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ tasks of late had turned out to be rescuing stranded Nepalis abroad.
Addressing a training organized by the Nepali Congress’s Central Training Academy at Bhairahawa today, Minister Rana reiterated, “Nepalis abroad are facing so many problems at present that by the look of things, it seems that the Foreign Ministry’s major task is to rescue them.”
The Minister admitted that rescuing Nepalis from across the world had been a very difficult task due to limited resources including human resources. According to her, a total of 40 countries had Nepali diplomatic missions at present while the Nepalis have been recorded to be living in over 100 countries across the globe.
The Ministry, she added, does not contain any information and record about whereabouts of Nepalis and how did they reach there until someone lands up in trouble and they need to be rescued. Citing the case of Nepali medical students in Bangladesh, the Minister shared that the Ministry came to learn about the number of Nepali students studying medicine there after they needed to be rescued.
“Even then, the limited human resources at the Nepali Embassy at Dhaka coordinated to bring back home stranded Nepali students in Bangladesh,” she recalled, adding that similar situations exist elsewhere and her Ministry was still delivering towards this despite the resources crunch.
She expressed her concern over the way thousands of Nepali women were travelling to the Middle East countries illegally although the government of Nepal has banned women from Nepal from going to those countries to work as domestic workers. “If they get into trouble, their rescue becomes a tough job,” Minister Rana mentioned.
On a different note, the Minister clarified that the Ministry launched an additional position to provide consular services to Nepali Diaspora across the world more effectively and to expand the Nepal’s foreign relations by rising above the traditional diplomacy.
The position, according to her, was launched after conducting an Organization and Management survey and believed that it would ease off things in coming days. The Minister also appraised that Consulate offices were established in Texas and San Francisco in the USA and Dubai in the UAE where there were no Nepali diplomatic missions but the number of Nepalis there remained relatively higher.
She cautioned that the news similar to the US government considering stopping disbursement of foreign assistance could be broken from any other countries and thus suggested that the Nepali congress launch a campaign in every villages to create jobs for youths at home and to develop country on its own.#nepal #political #rss
