Sunil Koirala of Nepal's Dhading district was lured to a job in Malaysia with a monthly income of Nepalese rupees (NPR) 20,000 per month three years ago. He did not hesitate to pay the recruiting agent NPR 1.5 lakh, although the government-fixed rate was NPR 80,000.

"But when he got there he found the salary was NPR 8,000 per month only. So he returned home after three years and started working as a shopkeeper in Kathmandu," Sunil's father Khageswar Koirala told journalists when they visited a rural area in Dhading.

Farmer Prem Tamang had gone to Dubai seven years ago as a construction worker from the same area. His wife Karuna Tamang said her husband paid NPR 1 lakh for the job, although the government rate was NPR 70,000 for gulf countries.

"We did not have any choice. We took huge loan for building a house and treatment of our daughter. We could not repay the loan with the farming income," said Karuna, who now works as a day labourer to supplement her husband's remittance of NPR 15,000 sent every two months.

The tales of migrants from rural Nepal almost mirror  those from Bangladesh, where young men often pay a large amount of money for foreign jobs to escape from poverty, loans and social challenges.

Khageshwar Koirala at his quake-ravaged home. His son Sunil was cheated by a manpower recruiting agency. Both the photos were taken recently. Photo: Harihar Sing Rathour/Tamanna Khan

Miseries and challenges of migrants from the South Asian nations were presented at a three-day-long workshop on Migration and Media in Nepal jointly organised by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) and Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium (RPC) of Sussex University, UK during the second week of this month.

Twenty one journalists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka shared their experiences at the workshop and discussed the success and failure of policy decisions taken by their respective governments to ensure migrants' rights.

"One and a half months ago our government made it mandatory for employers in seven countries -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates -- to provide free visa and tickets to workers from Nepal," said Roshan Sedhai, sub-editor of Kathmandu Post, adding that the decision triggered huge protest among the recruiting agencies.

"The agencies claimed such a policy would shift the demands for labourers towards Bangladesh," he said.

The Bangladeshi journalists described how a similar government-to-government policy to reduce migration costs for workers aspiring to go to Malaysia faced similar resistance and forced many potential migrants to choose illegal sea-routes to reach the destination.

They also pointed out the higher migration costs ranging from BDT 3-4 lakh (about $3,800-$5,200) paid by Bangladeshi workers to go to Malaysia and the Middle Eastern countries compared to the Nepalese workers who pay between $1,000 and $2,000.

On an average, 500,000 workers migrate from Nepal every year, said Barbara Weyermann from Swiss Association for Development and Cooperation, a development organisation that works to develop skills of Nepalese migrants.

On the other side, Bangladesh sends, on an average, 480,000 workers abroad, according to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) statistics.

At the opening session, Dr Ganesh Gurung, former member of Nepal's Planning Commission, said the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) can be a platform to come up with common policies for migration and negotiate terms with the recruiting nations to ensure migrants' rights.

According to Dr Gurung, South Asia accounts for 12.4 percent of the world's migrants which is 1.6 percent of South Asia's population.

Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of South Asian magazine Himal, at the closing session referred to the Declaration 21 of the 18th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu where the member nations "agreed to collaborate and cooperate on safe, orderly and responsible management of labour migration from South Asia to ensure safety, security and wellbeing of their migrant workers in the destination countries outside the region".

Instead of losing the market by over-activism, which has the risk of driving away the recruiters, this clause can be used to strengthen the negotiation power of the labour exporting nations, he observed.

In addition to presentation by RMMRU researchers Dr Tasneem Siddique and Dr CR Abrar on migration and development and irregular migration, Bandita Sijapati from Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility (CESLAM), Nepal shared her studies on the post-earthquake effects on migration and resilience.