Refugees alleged for 'stealing' locals' jobs

By K. P. Gautam

BIRTAMOD, Feb. 20: The local people in eastern Nepal complain that the Bhutanese refugees are leaving their camps against Nepalese laws and stealing their jobs. "Since they take away our jobs, we have nowhere to go but abroad for employment," say they.

A number of refugees with good knowledge of the English language have been working as teachers in several schools in eastern Nepal.

"The refugees work not only as teachers and agricultural workers but also as carpenters and masons at cheaper wages. So the local residents have a hard time finding jobs," says Dil Bahadur Magar of Shanishchare, Jhapa.

The locals say that the refugees are being employed in various factories close to the camps. They are also involved in pig rearing and other similar occupations. Besides, they operate buses together with local entrepreneurs.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as some other international organisations have been providing more than 100,000 Bhutanese of Nepalese origin with food, clothing, shelter, drinking water and sanitation, health and education. The refugees have been living in the seven camps in Jhapa and Morang districts since 1991.

According to regulations, the refugees must take permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs to leave the camps. But neither the refugees nor the local administration tend to abide by the rules.
Tika Ram Aryal, Chief District Officer of Jhapa district and chief of the refugee coordination unit at Bhadrapur, says that the camps are not fenced. "It is also not proper to keep them inside a fenced territory from a humanitarian point of view."

Bishnu Prasad Dulal, former ward chairman of Khudunabari Village development Committee (VDC), says that apart from stealing local jobs, deforestation, land encroachment and social anomalies have been on the rise due to the presence of the refugees in such large numbers.

Conflict between the local people and the refugees often take place in the areas close to the camps. The locals are worried, as a conducive environment has still not been created to repatriate the refugees. "Either the refugees must be repatriated or the management in the camps should improve," says Dulal.

According to the refugees, they normally go outside the camps to earn some money to buy extra food, shoes and other goods because of the meager facilities in the camps.

"It is very difficult for me to feed my big family with the ration we receive," says Gyan Rai, who works as assistant headmaster of a school at Itahari.

"We understand the problems of the local people. But it is our compulsion to go outside," says Dr. T. B. Gurung, secretary of the Khudunabari camp management committee. He has been on a hunger strike for the last one month, demanding repatriation of the refugees in his camp who were verified by a joint team more than a year ago.

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