Kathmandu, January 23:

Despite foreign employment being big support to the national economy, the sector is yet to be systematised and made transparent, speakers at a workshop on ‘Foreign Employment: Problems and Solutions’ organised in the capital said today.

They urged joint efforts and sectoral accountability to strengthen the sector and to provide access to more people to foreign employment.

Preventive and curative efforts along with promotion and public awareness regarding opportunities and challenges for foreign employment should be disseminated in order to make services more accessible to people at large, said Jitendra Bikram Thapa, secretary at ministry of labour and transportation. “Service agreement between manpower organisations and foreign employers would further aid in making people’s jobs and life secure,” he said.

For financial investment, the banking sector should be tapped and also the network of cooperatives could play a pivotal role in providing financial support to the needy, he added. Participants at the workshop underscored the need for promotional policies, strategic planning, exploring new destinations and bilateral agreement. Simple, secure and easy processing would play a catalytic role for the promotion of the sector, participants said.

Rabindra Khanal, state minister for labour and transportation management said that categorical identification of problems is necessary to formulate policies. “There is a need for amending policies to provide foreign employment opportunities to a larger section of the populace. Cooperatives can play a pivotal role to link the poor and the needy to foreign employment schemes,” Khanal said.

Categorisation of manpower agencies, country-specific training and controlling agents that lie at various levels of foreign employments networks are in the pipeline of the ministry, said Thapa.

Meanwhile, representatives of manpower agencies also urged for documentation of the contributions made by the foreign employment sector to the national economy. Reintegration of people who return from foreign employment to the social and economic fabric of the country was also identified as a problem that has hindered the development of the sector.