Daily News

View All News

Nepal – Association of Foreign Employment agencies set for another round of strikes

12 February 2016

The Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (Nafea), an umbrella organisation of recruiting agencies in Nepal, has threatened to halt all foreign employment related services unless the government revises the free-visa-free-ticket policy to address their concerns, reports ekantipur.com.

Nafea representatives said that they would disrupt services if the government did not suspend the low-cost recruitment scheme within the deadline of 12 February 2016 and replace it with an improved one.

Previously, Nafea had announced an indefinite strike following the Nepalese government’s implementation of a zero-cost migration policy introduced in July last year. The association called off the strike after reaching a 31-point agreement with the government. In the agreement, the government has pledged to revise the scheme based on the recommendation of a joint panel after a wider consultation on the matter with local authorities and stakeholders in the labour receiving countries.

"We were assured that there would be proper revision in the scheme based on objective analysis,” Nafea First Vice-chairman, Kumud Khanal, said. “But nothing has happened yet. We will be forced to take extreme measures if the concerned authorities fail to act in good faith.”

Nafea officials have warned of another indefinite strike and the disruption of all foreign employment related services later this month.

Last year, a joint panel comprising Nafea representatives, government officials and other experts had visited various labour destinations to take feedback on the ‘free-visa-free-ticket’ scheme. The panel had found employers and concerned stakeholders of all major work destinations in favour of the new scheme, with the exception of Malaysia.

The free-visa-and-free-ticket provision, intended at preventing economic exploitation of workers in the name of recruitment fees, came into force on 6 July. The scheme binds employers of the seven major work destinations for Nepali workers--Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait--to bear the costs of ticket and visa processing while recruiting Nepali workers. An estimated 3.5 million Nepali migrants work in the seven countries.

Recruitment agencies claim that the decision has taken a heavy toll on their businesses, as the employers are hiring workers from other countries. There has been a decrease in job demand after the scheme came into effect. Official figures, however, suggest a steady rise in demand for Nepalese workers from all work destinations except Malaysia.

Officials at the Nepal Ministry of Foreign Employment (MoLE), however, said that there would not be any immediate change to the free-visa-free-ticket scheme.