KATHMANDU - Malaysia's home minister negotiated here today with authorities in Nepal to help formalise the status of labourers from the Himalayan kingdom working in his country.

An estimated 105,000 Nepalese work in Malaysia and many have faced legal tangles after being duped by recruiters who sell them fraudulent documentation, a Nepalese foreign ministry official said.

Malaysian Home Minister Azmi Khalid met Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on Thursday and was expected by Saturday to reach a bilateral agreement to bring more transparency to the flow of labour, the official said.

Nepal estimates at least 500,000 of its nationals, mostly unskilled men, work in foreign countries, excluding neighbouring India, and that they send 1.08 billion dollars a year in remittances back to the cash-strapped kingdom. - AFP