Project

Stranded: Nepalese Companies Abandon Workers in Qatar

Nepalese migrant workers in Qatar routinely face dangerous working conditions as well as cramped and unsanitary living quarters. Yam Kumari Kandel and Shilu Manandhar, the Pulitzer Center's 2015 Persephone Miel fellows, traveled to the Persian Gulf country to interview migrant workers in the labor camps where they live and, in some cases, in their hospital beds.

The pair spent more than six months reporting. They found injured Nepalese workers in vegetative states and unable to return home, and others swindled by both Qatari employers and Nepalese agencies that trap workers into forced and bonded labor.

Far From Home, Injured Nepalese Workers Languish in Qatari Hospitals

When Nepalese migrant workers are seriously injured while working in Qatar there are no mechanisms that allow for them to return to Nepal. More than a dozen Nepalese workers are comatose or in a vegetative state in Qatari hospitals, but their families cannot take on the expensive burden of bringing them home.