Kathmandu, June 21

A joint-technical team of the governments of Nepal and Malaysia is expected to meet within one month and sort out various issues hindering the resumption of supply of labour force from Nepal to the Southeast Asian nation.

An official at the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MoLESS) informed, on condition of anonymity, that high-level officials of the two countries have agreed to

resolve existing issues through a joint-technical committee meeting and resume worker supply to Malaysia as soon as possible.

“Though the joint-technical committee meeting has been planned, we are yet to fix the date, but it will be within a month,” said the official.

The supply of Nepali workers to Malaysia has been halted since May last year after the government cracked down on Immigration Security Clearance and One Stop Centre that had been levying additional charges on Nepali migrant workers.

Though the two governments had inked bilateral labour pact in October last year, the outflow of Nepali migrant workers to Malaysia is still uncertain. However, the government had started issuing work permits to those Malaysia-bound Nepali migrant workers who have already received the ‘calling visas’ from April this year.

The outflow of migrant workers to Malaysia could not resume despite the labour pact especially due to inability of the two governments to finalise health institutions to be allowed to conduct health checkups of workers. In this backdrop, the government few weeks ago finalised the list of 51 health and medical institutions responsible to conduct the health check-up of Nepali migrant workers aspiring to go for foreign employment, while the outflow of workers to Malaysia is yet to resume.

The MoLESS official said that the upcoming bilateral meeting will identify the root problems, sort it out and resume the workers’ supply to Malaysia.