Kathmandu, September 4

As a result of mismanagement of services being provided to foreign migrant workers, the government has said it will integrate all systems and statistics related to foreign employment service in country.

The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MoLESS) has said it is gathering all the information and preparing to launch an integrated system from Monday.

“We are going to launch the system to avoid the mismatch in data related to foreign migrant workers and other related information,” said Raju Shrestha, senior system engineer at MoLESS.

According to the ministry, the system will have a software, which can be accessed by all concerned with foreign employment services, including MoLESS, manpower companies, line offices under MoLESS, orientation centres, Department of Passport, Department of Immigration, Department of Consular Services, various government agencies, diplomatic missions and Nepali embassies abroad.

However, access to system will be limited as per requirement of the concerned entity.

The ministry has mentioned the system will include information related to the visa approval process and details of manpower agencies. Moreover, it will also include information regarding salaries to be given to the migrant workers, and details of employers and migrants, as per MoLESS.

Other information that will be included will be related to labour contract of the manpower companies, medical reports, air tickets, name of the airlines and its schedule and return date. The system will also have reports on the knowledge and skills acquired by returnee migrant workers.

“When system is launched, the employer and other related offices will just have to provide migrant’s passport number and all details will be displayed on the website, which will help the respective organisations in any other future works related to the migrant workers,” Shrestha stated.

At present, the government only collects data on number of workers flying abroad for jobs. When the system is implemented, it will automatically keep every record of migrants. “Due to lack of authentic data, we have been facing problems at times when government wants to formulate any policy related to migrant workers,” said Prakash Dahal, spokesperson for MoLESS.

As per government, unverified data shows that more than five million migrant workers are currently working in foreign destinations and most of them are going through labour re-entry process, which always makes it difficult to keep the exact data.

“When we start collecting data of migrant workers as per new system, we will be able to ascertain their knowledge, experience and efficiency of their work to help promote self-employment in the country,” said Dahal.