DOHA: The migrant Nepali workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) willing to return home have complained about the high price they have to pay for their flights back to Nepal.

The government has fixed 450 diram as the ticket price for the journey back to Nepal for chartered flights. They complain that they do not get tickets at that price even on regular flights.

A Nepali told Khabarhub that the travel agencies claim 2200-3500 diram for the flight.

“We do not get the ticket in 3000 dirams even in the black market,” the migrant worker willing to return home told Khabarhub insisting anonymity.

“The Nepalis willing to home pay whatever amount the tickets are fount at in the hotels, groceries and cargo office,” he complained.

The annoyed migrant workers say that the government has deceived and misinformed the public declaring that the regular flights have resumed.

“If the regular flights have resumed, why is there the provision of letting only 800 people fly home in a day?” he queried.

There is no sense in limiting the number of home returnees when there is the provision of letting the passengers with COVID-19 negative reports go home directly as their return has nothing to do with quarantine capacities in Kathmandu.

The migrant workers willing to return home smell foul in the government’s decision of letting only 800 people come home as such provisions benefit only the corrupt and ill-intent.

Although big companies like Voltrason, Transguard, etc are ready to send the workers carrying out their coronavirus test in company expenses, many Nepalis are likely to suffer due to the hiked ticket price they are forced to buy from the travel agencies.

But there is another problem hunting the Nepalis in UAE. The NRNA UAE complains due to the incoming number limits of 800 persons in a day, the Nepali migrant workers are likely to be left discarded despite the plan of the companies to send them home through chartered flights.

The workers in the UAE are likely to be badly affected by the delay as many of them have got their visas expired or canceled. The longer they remain there, the higher the penalty they have to pay.

It is remarkable that 17 Nepalis were stranded here failing to pay such penalty a few weeks back.

According to the Nepali Embassy in UAE, there are more than 45 thousand Nepalis aspiring to return home at the earliest. Only 17 thousand Nepalis have returned home to date.

Many Nepalis complain that they are unable to get tickets for their journey home as there are just a few chartered flights of Nepal Airlines.

On the other hand, the Nepal Airlines office here complains that it’s getting very difficult to manage the crowd queuing for tickets as the number of Nepalis willing to return home and registered so in the Riyad based Nepali Embassy is very large.