Nepalese migrant workers queuing to receive official documents in order to leave Nepal from the labour department in Kathmandu yesterday.
Nearly 200 Nepali workers died in Qatar last year, many of them from heart failure, officials said yesterday.
The Nepal embassy in Doha said it registered 191 deaths last year compared with 169 the year before.
“In the year 2013, a total of 191 Nepali migrant workers died in Qatar,” Harikanta Paudel, a senior embassy official, told AFP by telephone.
“The highest number of deaths occurred in July when 32 workers died,” Paudel said.
A Kathmandu-based foreign ministry official said that a third of the deaths recorded were due to “unnatural” heart failure.
“Young and healthy men in their twenties and thirties have died... it is unnatural,” claimed official Subhanga Parajuli.
“Cardiac arrest is followed by traffic accidents as another main cause of death. The third cause of death is injuries during work,” Parajuli said.
More than 1mn Nepali migrant workers work in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia. Qatar alone hosts around 400,000 Nepalis as part of its 2mn strong migrant workforce.