Minister Giri vows to record migrants

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Minister for Labour and Transport Management Sarita Giri has assured to build a strong mechanism to record all Nepali migrant workers.

According to Department of Foreign Employment, about 3.5 million Nepali migrants are working in over four dozen countries, of them only 2.1 million are recorded.

Above 10 million Nepalis are believed to be working in Gulf countries Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and others.

The ministry will introduce new recording mechanism soon, she said, adding that all the stakeholders – from migrants to outsourcing agencies – should cooperate the government move.

“Without support from the migrants and outsourcers, the ministry alone could not record all migrants,” she said, addressing an interaction organised to mark International Migration Day here today. Currently, the government is recording only those migrant workers who contact the department for foreign job approval. The department has issued about 156,730 job approvals in the first four months of current fiscal year.

Despite the promise from minister, managing records of all the migrants is a challenge to the government due to open border with India. Currently, about 200-300 Nepalis are joining jobs in Gulf countries via India as the department has tightened the foreign job approval process. Of the total 60-70 Nepali migrants are women. It is difficult to record all the migrant workers in exiting geopolitical situation of Nepal, said general secretary of Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies Kumud Khanal. “We can record nearly 80 per cent of the migrants, if we introduce pro-people policy,” he said.

He suggested the government to adopt strategy to discourage individual migration. “The government should only promote organisational migration,” he said. Over 70 per cent of the Nepali migrant workers are unskilled and illiterate or little educated and the cleaver agents can cheat them easily.