KATHMANDU: Malaysia has been cold-shouldering Nepal’s proposal to renew the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the employment of workers.
Officials of the Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security say Malaysia has shown little interest in revisiting the MoU due to the existing syndicate in the medical check-up sector for migrant workers.
Nepal and Malaysia signed the MoU in Kathmandu on October 29, 2018. The Minister for Labor, Employment, and Social Security, Gokarna Bista, and Malaysia’s Minister for Human Resources, M Kulasegaran, had signed the MoU on behalf of their respective governments. Although the two sides had reached an understanding to revisit the MoU after four years, labor ministry officials say Malaysia is not responding to their proposals to revise the MoU.
Minister for Labor, Employment, and Social Security, Sharat Singh Bhandari, told Himal Press that the government was preparing to renew the MoU for five years. “Discussions between the two sides to renew the MoU are progressing. However, both parties have not yet entered into open discussions on the matter,” Bhandari said. “Malaysia has started reforming its policy on bringing in foreign workers. For this, the Malaysian government seems to have taken initiatives to end the existing syndicates in the sector.”
He added that efforts are being made to negotiate with the Malaysian government to ensure that workers headed to Malaysia do not have to pay any service fees other than the welfare fund, employment security, insurance and travel expenses, and that all costs are borne by the employer.
Since various syndicates have been exploiting workers heading to Malaysia, the Malaysian government is not showing interest in revising the labor MoU with Nepal, a high-ranking official at the ministry said. The official added that Malaysia has not responded to the draft MoU sent through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“There was already a syndicate in the medical check-up sector for workers going to Malaysia. But recently, recruitment companies have also been involved in creating separate syndicates,” the official said. “Because of this, there has been little progress in reviewing the MoU.”
Minister Bhandari said informal discussions are ongoing with Malaysia to address the syndicate problem in Malaysian employment and to revise the MoU.
Malaysia decided to stop hiring foreign workers last year. It, however, started hiring workers in certain sectors, including plantations, in September. Although a Malaysian employer had issued a demand letter to recruit 2,000 workers from Nepal, it halted the recruitment process after it found that recruitment companies were collecting excessive amounts from workers in advance.
However, Dik Bahadur Khatri, vice president of the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, said the Malaysian government has not shown interest in recruiting Nepali workers due to a lack of diplomatic initiatives by the Embassy of Nepal in Kuala Lumpur. “Some individuals within the government and even ministers are involved in the syndicate targeting workers. This must end. But the government has not shown interest in eliminating the syndicate,” he added.
A total of 259,954 Nepali workers left for Malaysia in 2022/23. The number fell to around 120,000 in 2023/24. Around 400 Nepalis have left for Malaysia in the first seven months of 2024/25, according to the Department of Foreign Employment.
