“We have noticed that manpower agents have been collecting exorbitant charges, far higher than we have fixed, from job aspirants. We have requested them to reduce the fees. But, our requests have fallen in deaf ears,” Mohan Krishna Sapkota, director general of Department of Foreign Employment, told myrepublica.com on Sunday.
Objecting to ill-practice of levying exorbitant fees on job aspirants and lack of job related training, Israel has stopped issuing fresh work permits to Nepali workers since last month. Israel is the most favored labor destination for Nepali women caregivers.
Nepali workers earn around Rs 60,000 a month in Israel where more than 12,000 Nepalis are estimated to have been working.
Manpower agents said they were compelled to collect higher amount from job seekers as they had to pay a large amount of commission to agents in Israel. Some Nepalis working in Israel have also teamed up with the Israeli agents to charge commissions from Nepali agents, they said. “We are not in a position to send workers to Israel at government-set fee due to high costs of arranging jobs in Israel,” said a manpower agent.
Recently, Foreign Employment Promotion Board (FEPB) had recommended that the government allows manpower agents to collect up to Rs 360,000 from each worker seeking job in Israel. However, the government has not yet decided whether to apply the new rate or not.
“It is not appropriate to increase the charges without studying its impacts,” said Purna Chandra Bhattarai, joint secretary at the Ministry of Labor and Transport Management.
Though one month has already been passed since Israel stopped issuing work permits to Nepalis, nothing concrete has been done from the Nepal government´s side to get the restriction on Nepali workers lifted.
“We have initiated diplomatic process through our embassy in Israel to reopen Israel for Nepalis. We are not sure when the problem will be resolved,” said Sapkota.
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