17 more Nepalis arrive home from Afghanistan

With the arrival of 17 more Nepalis from the capital city of Afghanistan on Thursday, a total of 305 Nepalis have been rescued.

Nepalis who arrived in Kathmandu on Thursday were brought home on a chartered flight of Jazeera Airways, Harish Chandra Ghimire, joint secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told NepalNews. They landed at the Tribhuvan International Airport at around 8:00 am.

"There were 1,500 Nepalis who had formally been working in Afghanistan while there is no exact data on others who have entered the country through the informal channels in foreign employment," Ghimire said.

Meanwhile, the only way to get accurate data on how many Nepalis have been stranded in Afghanistan is through the online registration form made available by the website of the Department of Consular Services.

He said that the government would have arranged repatriation flights for Nepalis in Afghanistan if the security situation were better. "However, we have been constantly keeping an eye on the situation in the country where the Taliban have seized the power. The current situation in Afghanistan is such that it seems not suitable for operating the repatriation flights on the civilian aircraft," MoFA joint secretary Ghimire said, and added, "We have been trying our best to find all possible solutions to rescue and evacuate Nepalis stranded there." 

The government has formally entered into correspondence with the United Nations, the UK, Canada, Germany, the European Union, Japan and the offices of the United Nations to immediately rescue and repatriate Nepalis working in diplomatic missions and international organisations in Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan.

The Ministry has so far registered 296 online application forms for the rescue and evacuation of Nepalis, Ghimire informed.  

The online registration portal has been set up on the website of the (DoCS) at https://nepalconsular.gov.np/ to collect the details of Nepali nationals in Afghanistan for rescue purposes. The concerned person or the family members are requested to register the details including their name in the portal immediately.

The Nepali migrant workers in Afghanistan or their family members in Nepal can contact the mobile numbers including Viber and WhatsApp facility + 977-9749326458 (DoCS) and + 977-9749326459 (MoFA) to inform the condition and for the rescue operation.

A Travel Advisory has also been issued by the Nepali Mission in New Delhi on the latest developments and current situation in Afghanistan.

For necessary assistance, the Embassy of Nepal, New Delhi can be contacted through the following phone numbers and emails:

Embassy of Nepal, New Delhi

Hotline: +918929601925 (also WhatsApp active)

Email: eondelhi@mofa.gov.np

consularnepaliembassy@gmail.com

Likewise, the manpower companies involved in sending Nepalis to Afghanistan in foreign employment have been urged to provide the MoFA with the details and information data necessary for their rescue.

Afghanistan's embattled president left the country on August 15, joining his fellow citizens and foreigners in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban and signalling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.

Educated young women, former US military translators and other Afghans most at risk from the Taliban have appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled on Wednesday to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport.

Meanwhile, the Taliban are celebrating Afghanistan’s Independence Day today declaring it had beaten the United States.

One of the last windows of escape from Taliban threatens to close when Biden’s planned pullout by Aug 31 is complete.

US officials have said that they have evacuated 4,480 people since they took control of the airport over the weekend. The turmoil there has seen Afghans rush the tarmac. In one instance, some apparently fell to their death while clinging to a departing American C-17 transport plane.