KATHMANDU, March 7: The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday issued a show cause notice in the name of government and other concerned ministries regarding their dealing with alarming death of migrant workers aboard and inappropriate mechanism to bring them back home.

Responding to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), a single bench of Justice Deepak Raj Joshi issued the notice seeking reasons from the Office of the Prime Minister and other government agencies dealing with the dead bodies of migrant workers.

The court has sought reasons behind the lack of proper policy to repatriate the dead body irrespective of legal status, lack of necessary arrangements at the International airport such as a proper facility for handling the body, lounge for the family members and other logistic arrangements including the postmortem requirement of the dead body (if required in Nepal) with the government bearing the necessary cause.

On December 27, Law and Policy Forum for Social Justice (LAPSOJ) and Pourakhi Nepal had registered a PIL at the apex court, seeking reforms in the foreign employment sector.

It has demanded that the cause of migrant workers’ deaths be identified and the orientation trainings and pre-departure health check-ups reformed to bring down the number of deaths of migrant workers abroad (as most of the deaths occurred recently were considered as preventable death).

Advocates Hari Phuyal, Milan Rai, Kedar Dahal, Barun Ghimire and Anurag Devkota argued before the court on Tuesday's preliminary hearing.

 
• supreme court
 
• clarification sought
 
• dead bodies
 
• migrant workers