At soaring rate, Nepalis seeking jobs abroad come home dead

[...] on this day, too, six young men will come back in wooden caskets, rolled like suitcases out of baggage claim on luggage carts.

On the wooden lid of one someone has written in black marker: "Human Remains, Balkisun Mandal Khatwe, Male — 26 years — Nepali."

Natural death, heart attack or cardiac arrest are listed for nearly half the deaths.

[...] medical researchers say these deaths fit a familiar pattern:

"Nepalese workers are well known for their hard work, dedication and loyalty," boasts the Nepalese Embassy website in Doha, Qatar, where a pre-World Cup construction boom employs about 1.5 million migrants.

The unskilled workers fill a host of global demands: building highways, stadiums and houses in Gulf states and guarding shopping malls, sewing sweatshirts and assembling televisions in Malaysia.

The men borrow at 36 percent interest rates from money lenders or sell off family land to get the $1,100 stake needed for recruiters, airline tickets and more.

Conditions vary by country and employer, but it's not uncommon for workers to find themselves living a dozen or more to a room, sleeping stacked on three-tiered bunks, working 10- to 15-hour days, seven days a week, for years.

[...] his mom takes a visitor aside and says the situation is horrible — Salit can't squat by himself over the pit toilet, she says, and she has to clean him up afterward.

Sitting behind her tidy desk at the Department of Foreign Employment, spokeswoman Rama Bhattarai shrugs off the death toll.

Krishna Dawadee, acting director of Kathmandu's one-stop work permit center, waves an arm at the hundreds of young men gathered at the service window seeking final work approvals.

Outside the gates, life insurance salesmen grab at the prospective workers' arms and sweaters, trying to pull them into their offices to sell policies.

The badly rutted and cracked road from the Kathmandu airport to Belhi village is closed after dark be