Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security, Sharat Singh Bhandari, urged the parliamentary committee to allow permission for women to go for overseas employment in a legal and systematic way. In today’s meeting of the Parliament’s Industry, Commerce, Labour and Consumer Interest Committee, Minister Bhandari suggested the Committee to rethink on its earlier decision of restricting women going abroad for overseas employment. “The Committee should make a concrete decision and concept on the issue of women workers in overseas employment. There is a situation that thousands of women are going for overseas employment illegally in tourist and student visa. It is necessary to adopt easy and smooth way making it legal and systematic in order to stop it,” he mentioned.
The Labour Minister shared that Committee’s support was necessary to make it systematic as workers who went for overseas employment illegally are not only deprived of service and facilities provided by the State, there would be problem to get information about the condition of such workers as well. Saying they have got information that there are more than 20,000 women workers in THE Gulf countries including Kuwait and UAE, he pointed out the need of facilitating the women workers going on foreign employment. The Committee had prohibited the women workers going for overseas employment after many incidents of domestic violence facing by women workers in course of overseas employment came into light in past. Stating that the framework for the implementation of agreement of forwarding the selection of Nepali nurses in order to send them to the UK systematically and effectively has already been approved by the Cabinet, Minister Bhandari added that a policy has been adopted for seeking opportunities of employment for skilled human resources in the countries that have friendly relations with Nepal.
Similarly, secretary of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security Kebal Bhandari urged concerned authorities to manage for the returnee migrant workers to utilise their skills acquired from foreign jobs in agriculture by providing them with concessional loans. The government has come up with a policy to provide skill development and livelihood training for around 15,000 people of 220 local levels in the next fiscal year. The total 751,263 people aspiring to go to foreign countries for job opportunities received the labour permits as of July 6 (682,206 men and 69,057 women). Service seekers can get facilitation in getting the individual labour permits and getting labour permits renewed from the employment service centres in 753 local levels established to make foreign employment safe, decent and accessible, said the Ministry.
