KATHMANDU: It has been found that more than 12,000 workers could not be sent for foreign employment in the month of Poush (mid-Dec to mid-Jan) despite having demand due to bureaucratic red tape.
According to Dik Bahadur Karki, vice president of the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA), workers could not be sent to 76 countries for foreign employment in Poush due to the delay by Nepali missions in the verification of demands.
Karki said manpower agencies sent workers to only 17 countries in the review month compared to the previous month when workers left for job destinations in 93 countries.
Data released by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) shows 29,316 Nepali workers left for foreign job destinations through recruitment agencies. In the previous month, recruitment companies had sent over 41,000 workers to foreign job destinations.
“Demand for over 12,000 workers couldn’t be processed in Poush due to the delay in verification of demands by Nepali diplomatic missions,” Karki said. “Most of these demands were from European and African nations.”
Workers mostly leave for job destinations in European countries through individual labor approval rather than institutional ones. Recruitment companies say one of the reasons behind this is the problems with the verification of labor demands.
According to the DoFE, recruitment companies sent workers to countries like UAE, Bahrain, Cyprus, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mauritius, Oman, Qatar, Romania, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Turkey in the review month.
Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security, Sharat Singh Bhandari, said that the government was working to facilitate demand letter verification. “Workers are going through individual labor approvals to Europe because demand letters aren’t being verified on time. There are also complaints about brokers charging excessive fees through illegal arrangements. We are discussing with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to resolve this issue,” Bhandari said.
The number of Nepali workers leaving the country for Eastern European countries has been increasing since 2017. In the last fiscal year, over 60,000 Nepalis jobseekers left for 11 European countries. More than 35,000 Nepalis have left the countries for employment in different European countries in the first six months of the current fiscal year.
