Kathmandu, March 21

The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MoLESS) has directed the local governments to collect the details of unemployed people in their respective regions.

MoLESS issued a directive to this effect today through the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration in a bid to implement the Prime Minister Employment Programme of the government.

MoLESS has already mobilised employment coordinators across 485 local units in a bid to collect the details of unemployed people. These employment coordinators will work to collect data of the unemployed persons at the respective local levels, update it and provide identity cards to the listed unemployed people.

The directive issued today has asked all local governments to collect such details in coordination with the assigned employment coordinators.

Similarly, the government has asked local units to use one of its staffs to collect such details if their local unit has not been assigned an employment coordinator.

Earlier, the government had called for registering the names of the unemployed people at every local level by April 13.

“Currently, we are focusing on gathering the actual number of unemployed people across every local unit. Once such data is collected, we will take the Prime Minister Employment Programme to the implementation level,” said Loknath Bhusal, under secretary at the Prime Minister Employment Programme Section at MoLESS.

Unveiled on February 13, the Prime Minister Employment Programme guarantees jobs for a minimum of 100 days to those who are unemployed.

The scheme also ensures that all the unemployed people will get 50 per cent of the minimum wage that it has set if they remain unemployed for 100 days and none of their family members are employed for a year.

The amount that the government will dole out will be equivalent to 50 per cent of the government-set minimum monthly wage of Rs 13,450 for 100 days.