- Chinese restaurant owners ´thrashed´
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Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Foreign Minister Sujata Koirala interacted with the Chinese ambassador and other embassy officials recently over the recurrent incidents of attacks on the Chinese businessmen, especially the restaurant operators.
A Chinese Embassy official told myrepublica.com that the prime minister spoke to the ambassador over the phone soon after the embassy drew his attention to the need to guarantee the safety of its Chinese businessmen in Nepal.
The embassy had in the first week of July written to the prime minister and the International Labor Organization (ILO) drawing their attention to such "unwanted" incidents. The embassy took up the issue strongly after the incident at Beijing Hotel International, Jamal, where the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GFONT) members and former employees of the hotel beat up the owners -- Pan William and Yang Sun -- and five staff of the hotel on June 27 alleging them of not enforcing labor laws in the hotel.
An eight-member delegation of Chinese businessmen had then met with the head of the business trade section of the Chinese Embassy and sought embassy´s proactive role in helping them run business in secure environment in Nepal.
In the span of seven years, of the 260 Chinese manufacturing companies registered with the government of Nepal, more than 100 companies have closed down. There are now just about 70 such companies producing items such as medicines, bicycle, motor parts, chemicals, detergents, plastic items and napkins.
Except for the construction business, a majority of Chinese businessmen residing in Nepal on business visa are engaged in hotel and restaurant business. Foreigners pay a meager $300 a year for acquiring a business visa and are required to only show a plan to invest a minimum of $20,000 in a business venture in Nepal. The visa is renewed each year.
akanshya@myrepublica.com
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