Unemployment vs foreign employment

We have seen a positive turnaround in Nepal’s foreign employment sector in the past decade, thanks to the country’s exposure to international markets amid ever strengthening effect of globalization and shrinking employment opportunities here at home. The decade-long Maoist insurgency in the country fomented the exodus of youths to overseas job markets—mainly Gulf nations and Malaysia. The age-old practice of making their way to India still exists, but the government lacks account of their status in the southern neighbor.

With the scope of foreign employment sector expanding rapidly, the ever weakening state mechanism is losing its grip to regulate and organize this crucial sector of the economy that attracts remittance equivalent to one-fifth of the total Gross Domestic Product.

If the government figure is anything to go by, departure of Nepali workers rose to 217,164 during fiscal year 2008/09, almost seven times higher than 35,543 recorded during fiscal year 1999/00 bringing the total number of Nepali overseas migrants to 1,429,423 so far excluding Nepalis in India who are there in millions. During the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, total workers leaving for international labor markets have reached 232,000.

At a time when foreign employment related problems are cropping up and even getting complicated with the rising number of Nepali migrants abroad, the government’s attention hasn’t still been drawn to seek long-term and short-term solutions. Instead of doing more to secure lives and rights of its people in the labor markets, the government is only concentrating on opening new labor markets. The government this year added Uganda as the 108th labor destination while Poland, Libya, Mauritius are among other new countries that have been opened by Nepal to send workers through institutional channel. Granting permission without assessing the situations in the countries creates problems after departure of the workers. The latest example is Libya, where 108 Nepali workers are living under severe exploitation from their employers and waiting for government initiatives to bring them back to Nepal. Besides the Libya episode, there are scores of instances of Nepalis being deported, detained, exploited and tortured.

Unfortunately, the government seems to have turned a blind eye to the burning issues and problems pertaining to the foreign employment sector such as rising incidents of physical exploitation and torture on Nepali women in receiving countries, violation of contract by employers, increasing trend of women workers leaving for countries where the government has restricted work permission and death of workers in industrial as well as traffic accidents. It is heart-breaking to see that families of workers who are supposed to receive remittance are compelled to receive their dead bodies instead. On an average, at least one Nepali loses his/her life everyday in labor destinations due to various reasons ranging from suicide, industrial and traffic accidents or physical torture.

Instead of doing more to secure lives and rights of its people in the labor markets, the government is only concentrating on opening new labor markets.

However, we haven’t seen concrete government efforts to minimize such problems. Nepali missions’ officials and labor attaches who are supposed to play a crucial role to ensure greater rights of Nepali workers in labor destinations have failed to do their duty properly. Worse, their behavior toward workers has been reported to be rude and irresponsible. Definitely, Nepali missions aren’t well-funded and well-equipped as compared to other countries’ missions. But, their efforts to deal with the problems facing the workers are not sufficient and serious.

The government failed to bring back Nepali workers from Libya through diplomatic channel or take any other measure such as asking the International Organization for Migration for its cooperation to repatriate them. Doesn’t our government have the capacity to mobilize its channels and funds for their rescue and take action against the concerned recruiting agency? If the government doesn’t have such capacity and special mechanism to rescue workers, why it is giving permission haphazardly to send workers to countries which are still being investigated for quality of employment opportunities?

The case of Nepalis in Libya is just the tip of an iceberg. Not even a single day goes by without seeing arrivals of exploited workers or hearing their narration of heart-breaking stories about their horrendous experiences in host countries. Scene of the arrival of dead body of workers and their desperate families receiving the coffin is something that happens everyday at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA). Our government boasts of contribution of remittance to the national economy but it has no clear vision on how to deal with problems multiplying with the growth of foreign employment sector.

There should be a clear vision and measures to deal with the issues that are becoming more complicated and challenging with each passing day. The government’s responsibility for migrant workers isn’t complete until they return home safely. Unfortunately, the government is only concentrating on granting permissions to send workers to labor destinations. We haven’t seen any concrete efforts to safeguard the rights and welfare of Nepali migrants.

The government lacks concrete policies on opening new destinations and dealing with the problems pertaining to foreign employment sector though reports of exploitation, mistreatment and cheating by brokers are rising. Worse still, reports of involvement of government employees in sending Nepali women to restricted countries—especially Gulf nations—are rife these days. They are allegedly lured by kickbacks from manpower agencies who are finding TIA as a safe heaven for manpower smuggling business after India restricted the departure of Nepalis to third countries through its territory.

Foreign employment is directly related to employment opportunities in the countries. Though at least 400,000 new youths enter the market every year, only over 200,000 job seekers are absorbed in foreign labor markets. If the latest survey of Central Bureau of Statistics is anything to go by, 30 percent of the population above 15 years is under-employed. The more than 40,000 youths who applied for Korean Language Test last week for jobs in South Korean is a telling example of how severe the unemployment problem is in Nepal. Though the three-year interim plan has envisaged creating at least 200,000 jobs each year, the government has no concrete idea to shore up employment opportunities given the deteriorating industrial climate in the country.

Heavy dependence on foreign employment is not a solution to rising unemployment nor should the nation entirely depend on remittance forever as even a minor policy change in the host countries would bring huge impact on source countries such as Nepal.

So the government has to formulate long-term and short-term policies to deal with the piles of issues pertaining to foreign employment. And the best long-term solution can only be the creation of jobs here to retain the productive youths in the country.