KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 23
Government authorities need to develop a standard framework for bilateral agreements on foreign employment to make foreign employment safe and orderly.
In a consultation meeting on 'Research on Nepal Labour Agreement with Destination Countries' organised by People's Forum for Human Rights, Adviser of the PFHR Som Prasad Luitel said, "In the absence of standard framework for bilateral agreements on foreign employment, some key elements were found missing in all the nine bilateral agreements and/or memorandum of agreements that Nepal has signed with labour destination countries, mostly the Gulf countries.
Advocate Luitel said bilateral agreements were easy to enforce, but out of nine agreements that Nepal had signed, only two - agreements with Israel and Jordan - were bilateral agreements and the remaining were memorandum of understanding.
Luitel said majority of the existing bilateral agreements and understandings had failed to ensure that Nepali migrant workers working in destination countries would be treated on par with the destination countries' nationals in terms of wages and other benefits.
Luitel said the government should ensure that the employer pays for the workers model (Employers who recruit Nepali migrant workers pay for their travel and other expenses) applies to all destinations and not only a few destinations at present.
Researcher Advocate Ojaswi Bhattarai said Nepali migrant workers who were not supposed to pay any money for their travel to the destination country were made to pay up to Rs 500,000. According to her, 64 per cent of the migrant workers bound to travel to foreign countries said they did not have their passports and travel documents, meaning someone else had kept their passports.
"Among the bilateral agreements that Nepal has signed, the agreement with Jordan is exemplary in terms of good practices, but similar provisions were not incorporated in other agreements," Bhattarai said. She said most of the migrant workers did not know about the grievances redressal mechanisms in the destination countries.
PFHR had conducted the research on 300 returnees and destination bound migrants. Only 39 per cent interviewees said they knew about the insurance provisions.
"This shows that a large number of Nepali migrant workers are not aware of their rights," Bhattarai added.
She said government authorities who thought foreign employment as an unfortunate phenomenon, were still in denial phase .
"But we need to make it safe and orderly."
A version of this article appears in the print on February 24, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
