2,000+ Nepali Workers Daily Denied Labour Permits as West Asia Tensions Persist

(NEPAL) — Nepal suspended labor approvals for work in 12 West Asian countries on March 1, 2026, cutting off new departures and renewals for thousands of workers as tensions persisted across the region.

The halt covers both new labor permits and renewals issued through the Department of Foreign Employment under the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security. As of March 18, 2026, the suspension remained indefinite, with no confirmed partial resumption.

Officials applied the measure to a broad swath of West Asia, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, along with several other destinations in the region. The move shut down approvals for some of the most common overseas destinations for Nepali workers.

The immediate effect has fallen on daily departures. Nepal normally issues 2,249 labour permits a day, and approximately 1,800 of those usually go to Gulf countries.

With those approvals frozen, nearly 1,500-1,800 workers per day now cannot leave for jobs they had prepared to take up abroad. Many had already borrowed money for recruitment, travel and other migration costs before the suspension took effect.

That has turned an administrative order into a financial shock for workers and families who had expected departures to continue. It has also disrupted the routine flow of labor migration that supports households across Nepal and feeds a much larger remittance economy.

Rameshwar Nepal, South Asia director at Equidem Research, said affected migrants and their families were in panic. He pointed to inadequate safety information, discrimination favoring nationals over migrants, including no SMS alerts for workers, restrictions on social media posting, and uncertainty about evacuation.

The scale of the blocked pipeline is visible in the most recent outbound figures. In the Falgun period from February 13 to March 14, 2026, 52,944 Nepalis received labor approvals and departed.

That total included 28,383 first-time approvals and 24,561 renewals, showing that the suspension reaches both new migrants and workers who had already gone abroad and were returning to jobs. The figures also underline how much of Nepal’s foreign employment system depends on continuous permit processing.

Men made up most of those departures, but women also accounted for a visible share. Of the 52,944 who received approvals and departed during the period, 46,452 were men and 6,392 were women.

Destination data from the same period shows how concentrated the flow had been. Malaysia led with 12,601 approvals and departures, followed by the UAE with 11,492, Qatar with 6,775, and Saudi Arabia with 6,225.

Those numbers matter because the suspension does not hit a marginal labor route. It cuts across some of the countries that have long absorbed large numbers of Nepali workers, especially in West Asia.

An estimated 1.7 to 1.9 million Nepalis are working in West Asia. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar rank among the largest destination countries for Nepali workers, with about 400,000 in Saudi Arabia, 400,000 in UAE, and 350,000 in Qatar.

The economic stakes extend far beyond the workers waiting at home. Remittances from West Asia exceed $3 billion annually and make up more than half of Nepal’s total $11 billion yearly remittances.

Overall remittances equal over 25% of GDP, tying household budgets, local spending and national foreign exchange earnings to the ability of Nepali workers to leave, work and send money home. A prolonged halt in labor approvals therefore reaches well beyond recruitment agencies and airport departure halls.

The government has framed the suspension as a safety measure tied to the deteriorating regional situation. Nepal imposed the halt because of escalating tensions from the US-Israel-Iran conflict, including Iranian missile and drone attacks on US bases in the Gulf.

Foreign Minister Balananda Sharma said on March 14, 2026, that the government’s priority is the safety of Nepali citizens and the diaspora. Authorities set up an Emergency Control Room and worked through Nepali missions to coordinate rescue efforts.

The government also organized rescue flights and evacuation efforts for over 5,000 citizens amid flight halts that stranded thousands. Those steps focused on Nepalis already in the region even as the labor approval freeze blocked new departures from Nepal.

That left two tracks running at once: evacuation and rescue for people already abroad, and an indefinite pause for those still waiting to leave. For workers with approved jobs but no permit clearance, the shutdown has created a standstill with no date for movement to resume.

The suspension has also complicated matters for returning migrants who need renewals rather than first-time clearance. Because the order applies to both categories, workers who had already established overseas employment relationships now face the same barrier as first-time applicants.

Recruiters, workers and families are now dealing with uncertainty on top of debt. The normal volume of permits shows why the disruption compounds quickly: each day of suspension adds another group of workers who cannot depart and another group of households left waiting.

The wider regional picture has reinforced the government’s caution. As of March 18, 2026, there was no confirmed partial resumption for the suspended destinations.

Broader pressures continue to shape that stance. Regional disruptions include Red Sea shipping detours and oil price increases from $67 to $100 per barrel.

Those factors do not affect migrants in the same way as permit suspensions or flight halts, but they add to the instability surrounding work destinations in West Asia. For a labor-exporting country like Nepal, that means the risks now stretch from physical safety to transport disruption and rising costs across the region.

The reach of the order is especially sharp because it came after a period of heavy movement. During Falgun alone, tens of thousands of Nepalis had still been receiving approvals and departing, which showed the system operating at full pace before the suspension shut that channel.

For families that had already sold assets, borrowed from relatives or taken loans, the break in departures has immediate consequences. Workers who expected to start earning abroad now remain in Nepal, carrying migration debts without the wages they had counted on to repay them.

The halt also lands hardest on West Asia-bound migration because that corridor takes such a large share of daily approvals. While Malaysia topped Falgun departures overall, the Gulf still accounted for around 1,800 of Nepal’s average 2,249 daily labour permits before the shutdown.

That concentration explains why the suspension has become more than a narrow policy change. It has interrupted one of Nepal’s busiest labor channels and left a backlog growing by the day.

For now, the government has kept its focus on protecting Nepalis already in the region through diplomatic missions, rescue coordination and evacuations. Workers waiting to leave, however, still face an indefinite freeze.

Eighteen days after the suspension began, the central facts remained unchanged: approvals for 12 West Asian countries were still on hold, around 1,500-1,800 workers per day still could not depart, and the families who depend on Nepali migration to West Asia still had no date for when the doors would reopen.