Roughly 230,000 Nepali migrant workers headed to the GCC states in 2018/19 alone, with the majority concentrated in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi. Qatar was the top destination for Nepali migrant workers, employing roughly 30% of all incoming Nepali workers abroad in the same period. This report focuses on Qatar for reasons of access, and it is critical to underscore that Nepal’s 2020 Labour Report indicates that high rates of unexplained deaths have occurred in several destination countries, and most notably in Saudi Arabia.
“This will be my last time working in this country,” Sukram Tharu said to his wife Rita on a video call from Qatar on a Friday night in April 2020. Before going to bed, he promised, “I will return home after a year and stay with you.”
But his promise will never be realised. Later that night, Sukram had suddenly complained of sharp pain in his chest. His fellow workers immediately called an ambulance, but it was already too late. He took his last breath in a cramped room in one of the wealthiest countries on earth – Qatar.
Qatar’s Public Health Department attributed his death to “acute heart failure due to natural causes.” But his wife is befuddled by his strange demise. “Just a few hours earlier, I saw him totally fine,” Rita said. “I don’t understand what happened to him. How could he die that way?”
To her knowledge, Sukram, 35, had no health ailments. Nor was he taking any medication. He was medically “fit” and did not have heart disease either, according to his pre-departure medical examination report.
After the death of the family’s sole breadwinner, their 13-year-old son dropped out of school. He began working as a labourer in his hometown in the Bardiya district of Nepal.
“Our other two – a daughter and a younger son – go to primary school, but I have trouble providing for them as I have no money,” said Rita, struggling to maintain her composure. “We had a dream of staying together in our newly built home. But he will never come back,” she added, with a choke in her voice.
Despite working in Qatar for more than six years, Sukram’s wife has not received any compensation from the employer. Nor has she received clarity as to the actual cause of Sukram’s death, as no post-mortem was conducted.
And it’s not only Sukram’s death that is mired in doubt.
CASE STUDIES
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An increasing number of Nepali migrant workers’ deaths in Qatar, and other destination countries have gone unexplained in recent years, with both Nepal and destination governments neglecting to ascertain the underlying causes.
Based on the deceased workers’ medical records, employment contracts, photographs, travel documents, and the testimonies from victims’ families, MRRORS.org’s investigation reveals a grim picture of untimely and unexplained deaths. The deaths of young, medically “fit” migrant workers, often raise no questions, are categorised as ‘natural causes,’ and cases are closed without attempts to understand the causes to prevent similar deaths.
The documents MR reviewed indicate that Qatar’s Public Health Department issued death certificates without carrying out any investigations to identify the real cause of death, even though these workers were in their 20s and 30s and certified healthy, in mandatory pre-departure tests, at the time of migration.
Notification of deaths is also a haphazard process, with neither the employer nor the embassy efficient, or the first, in contacting next of kin. Instead, when workers who otherwise speak to their families almost daily cease communication for a few days the families then call the co-workers to enquire — and that phone call is often how they find out about the passing of a loved one.
Between 2008 and 2019, a total of at least 1,095 Nepali migrant workers died in Qatar, which is nearly one-third of the total deaths that occurred across the Gulf countries, according to Nepal’s Foreign Employment Board - Opens in new tab, the government entity responsible for the welfare of migrant workers.
“The actual figure of workers’ deaths must be at least higher than they reported because it only incorporates the deaths of workers whose families received compensation,” said Yubraj Nepal, a co-founder of the Center for Migration and International Relations (CMIR), a non-profit organisation established by returnee migrant workers. “And the Board’s data excludes the deaths of undocumented workers because they cannot apply for the compensation as per Nepali law.”
CASE STUDIES
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The Nepali Embassy in Qatar that tracks all deaths did not provide the data but did respond via email to MR that they were currently processing the repatriation of three bodies.
Although the figures shared by different organisations on workers’ deaths vary slightly, they all indicate that the majority died of “cardiac arrest,” “heart failure,” and “natural cause” – terms that describe the “terminal event” or manner of death but do not specify the underlying cause.
In a recent report, Amnesty International accused - Opens in new tabQatari authorities of having “failed to properly investigate” workers’ deaths, thereby making it difficult to determine the underlying causes of deaths, and “precluding any assessment of whether they are work-related.”
“For medical professionals, what triggers cardiac arrest or heart failure is important,” said Dr Megnath Dhimal, the senior research officer at the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC). “Saying ‘due to natural causes’ literally doesn’t mean anything.”
In Qatar’s case, it could be related to working conditions, or it could even be a result of extreme heat stress as labourers work in high temperatures without drinking enough water, he added.
Some of the workers themselves had reported heat stress at their workplace before they died. Sukram, who worked on oil rig maintenance in Qatar, often told his wife that he had to work in the blazing heat. “He would say that his job was difficult, but he had to do it as he had no alternative,” Rita said.
Gangaram Mandal, 34, from the Saptari district of south-eastern Nepal, also worked under the scorching sun at a construction site. In July 2020, he died in his sleep. The death certificate, predictably, states “heart failure [due to] natural cause,” but his family members suspect he was worked to death.
“His health was excellent, and he had never taken any medicine related to the heart,” according to Laduwati Devi Mandal, Gangraram’s wife. “But I know he would work throughout the day in Qatar, no matter if it was sweltering hot.”
A 2019 International Labor - Opens in new tabOrganisation (ILO) report has also found that migrant labourers working outdoors in Qatar are exposed to “high” or “extreme” heat stress levels. The study revealed that one-third of the workers interviewed experienced dehydration and hyperthermia at some point.
CASE STUDIES
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‘Cardiac arrest’: Number one cause
Over a phone conversation just a day before his death, Mohammad Salauddin, 24, told his wife that he was planning to return home soon. His wife Madina Khatun recounted her last talk with her husband, sitting on the porch of a shabby wooden house in the Saptari district of Nepal.
“He seemed very excited, hoping to meet his daughter for the first time. But now it will never happen,” she looked at the only photo of her husband on her mobile, tears streamed down her cheeks.
Salauddin’s death left Madina a widow at 22, with a two-year-old daughter who has never met her father and a predatory debt that she has no idea how to pay off. “It’s our misfortune that he won’t be with us anymore,” said Khatun, who lived with him only for six months.
With no source of income at home, Salauddin had gone to Qatar with the hope of earning a decent salary, leaving behind his pregnant wife. In August 2018, he began working as a cleaning labourer. Three years later, he died. The death certificate states “Cardiac arrest” as the cause of death. This is difficult for the family to accept.
“He had never reported any health issues, never fallen sick. He was strongly built and young. I don’t think he could die of a heart problem,” said Salauddin’s mother Nunu Khatun, sobbing.
Among the documents that Salauddin’s family received along with his corpse, there is no post-mortem report.
Nepal’s Foreign Employment Act is silent on the investigation of Nepalis’ death abroad, while Nepal’s Criminal Procedure Code - Opens in new tab does not clearly describe whether its provisions regarding post-mortem apply to migrant worker cases. Nepal’s existing laws lack clarity over how to conduct post-mortem or autopsy, or any investigation whatsoever into deaths of migrant workers abroad. The Code states, in case of homicide, suicide and unusual situations, the investigation authority shall immediately go to the place where the corpse is located, examine the corpse, and send it to a doctor for postmortem.
“However, to my knowledge, there is no example of conducting an autopsy of the migrant workers in Nepal who died abroad,” said Anurag Devkota, a human rights advocate who works at Law and Policy Forum for Social Justice.
“Cardiac arrest” was the leading cause of death reported among Nepali migrant workers in Qatar between 2008 and 2019, accounting for 45% (489 workers) of total Nepali deaths in the country, according to Nepal’s Labor Migration Report - Opens in new tab. In 2019, a study by a group of climatologists and cardiologists - Opens in new tab examined the link between Nepali workers deaths and heat exposure in Qatar. They concluded that heatstroke was a likely cause of cardiovascular fatalities.
