Kathmandu, April 29

Though it has already been a month since Nepal and Japan signed an agreement to employ Nepali workers in Japan, the technical teams of both the countries will only be meeting next week for further negotiations on the agreement.

Officials of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MoLESS) have said that the discussion will be related to the method of language test, skill test and fixing the date of the exam. According to them, Nepali job aspirants looking for employment in Japan will probably have to wait for some more time before everything is sorted out.

As per the bilateral labour agreement, the first step of the recruitment process will be a Japanese language test that will be conducted by the Japanese government.

However, the Japanese government is yet to finalise the modality of the test and other hiring procedures.

According to MoLESS, both governments will form a joint technical team that will finalise the number of workers to be recruited and the process of their recruitment.

It will also finalise the benefits to be granted to workers. However, the cost a worker needs to bear to go to Japan is still under discussion. As per ministry officials, the government has requested Japan to allow Nepali workers to enter its job market at zero cost.

“We will finalise the method in which the language and skill tests will be conducted and the tests will be prepared by the joint technical team,” said an official from the ministry, adding that the Japanese authorities have informed that they will finalise the remaining works before the meeting.

The Japanese government has informed Nepali authorities that they want to first conduct the language test in two other countries — the Philippines and Indonesia — before conducting it in Nepal.

In December, the Japanese government had approved a law whereby Japanese firms will be allowed to employ blue-collar workers from eight countries, including Nepal. Japan plans to employ 345,000 foreign workers in five years.