Govt instructed to evacuate Nepalis from Afghanistan

The International Relations Committee under the House of Representatives has instructed the government to resort to all diplomatic means for the immediate evacuation of all Nepalis in Afghanistan.

Stating that the Nepali citizens could be left in the lurch while the Taliban insurgents were trying to take over Afghanistan’s capital Kabul and violence were being ensued in one of the SAARC member states.

The Committee has instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to evacuate Nepalis from Afghanistan to Nepal at the earliest.

Secretary at the MoFA Bharatraj Poudyal said that they had been observing the incidents in Afghanistan for some time now and the Ministry was seriously working towards repatriating Nepalis from there.

Poudyal said, “The condition of Afghanistan was turning from bad to worse. The government is concerned about the security of Nepalis there. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is taking the issue into serious consideration and coordinating efforts with Nepali Embassy in New Delhi in India to rescue Nepalis there.”

The Ministry estimates that there are over 1,500 Nepalis working in Afghanistan obtaining labour permits. As there were skilled and qualified Nepali workers working in various foreign assistance projects and international agencies, Poudyal refuted the rumours doing rounds in the media about the staggering number of Nepalis in Afghanistan working illegally.

Committee’s President Pabitra Kharel viewed that the government should not dilly at any cost to rescue Nepalis in Afghanistan.

The parliamentarians in the Committee’s meeting here today had drawn the attention of the officials in the MoFA to establish contacts with Nepalis in Afghanist and through social networking sites to make sure they were not left in the lurch since the violence was escalating there.

Afghanistan's embattled president left the country Sunday, 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.