Kathmandu, January 15

A high-level Japanese government technical team has arrived in Kathmandu today to hold extensive discussions regarding a bilateral labour agreement with concerned Nepali authorities.

The four-member team from Japan includes two representatives each from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice.

According to high-level officials from the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, both the nations are scheduled to hold discussions on the memorandum of cooperation, which  the Japanese government had earlier forwarded to the Nepali government.

As per the officials, the memorandum of cooperation mentions the minimum requirement for Nepali migrants to be eligible to seek jobs in Japan.

According to one of the sources, the technical team is scheduled to hold comprehensive discussions on labour quota that Japan intends to allocate for Nepal, sectors that will  absorb Nepali workers and whether the government or the private sector will oversee the migration process to Japan.

“I believe that the authorities of both the nations will finalise the modality of supplying workers and other legal issues, and also hold discussions on the sectors that Nepali workers will be employed in,” the source said. He added that the priority of the Nepali team will be to adopt a government-to-government (G2G) model to recruit Nepali migrant workers for various technical and non-technical jobs in Japan.

Nepal had formally proposed to the Japanese government on April 4 last year to follow a model similar to South Korea’s Employment Permit System (EPS) to recruit Nepali workers.

Currently, Japanese companies recruit Nepali workers through various recruitment agencies.

Recently, on January 9, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Gyawali had held talks with his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono, who was on a two-day official visit to Nepal, and both had agreed to hold extensive discussions on bilateral labour issues, among others.