KATHMANDU, JUNE 13
Civil society members have said that the Foreign Employment Policy 2012 needs to be amended to ensure safe, orderly, and regular migration of Nepali workers.
Presenting a paper on the Foreign Employment Policy, 2012, Adviser of People's Forum for Human Rights Advocate Shom Prasad Luitel said the policy needed to be changed to tackle challenges Nepal's migrant workers face in the process of migration and after they return to the country.
He said labour diplomacy should be the major goal of Nepal's policy as a huge number of people were going abroad for employment. Over 6 million people have received labour permits from the concerned government agencies.
Luitel said that the government must be clear as to how long it should continue to send its workforce abroad, what it wanted to achieve and when it should stop sending workers abroad.
The country should find new labour destinations and should find more bilateral agreements with labour destination countries.
At present, Nepal has signed bilateral agreements with only nine countries. He said many Nepali workers face problems in gulf countries as those countries gave very little rights to workers.
He said the government should amend its foreign employment policy to deal with the crime of human trafficking and human smuggling that took place in the name of foreign employment. He said Nepal needed to follow the Philippines model of one stop centre where those going to foreign countries for employment get almost all services at one centre. He said foreign employment sometimes leads to disintegration of families and the policy must deal with such issues as well.
Chair of National Network for Safe Migration Hari Bahadur Thapa said that the government must ensure that Nepali migrant workers living in foreign countries have the right to vote. He said the police should clearly mention that people going to foreign countries to work will not have to pay for visa and air travel.
Founder of Shakti Samuha Charimaya Tamang said that the Foreign Employment Policy should also address children of those Nepali women who conceived due to rape or who were abandoned by their male partners.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 14, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
