According to Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), a total of 126,081 left for foreign jobs between mid-July to mid-January, up from 122,081 last year. A total 91,379 male and 2,703 female left for greener pastures abroad through foreign employment agencies.[break]
Foreign employment agencies have attributed the rise in the number of workers to rising demand from major destinations on the back of recovering economies after a long period of slackness.
“We have received encouraging demands from Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Demands from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have also been going up gradually,” said Tilak Ranabhat, president of Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA).
Last year, Malaysia and the UAE had announced to limit the number of migrant workers amid deepening financial crisis. Economies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, however, were less affected by the global meltdown.
Though the number of overseas workers surged over the period, economic recession caused remittance growth to contract as compared to last year. According to Nepal Rastra Bank, remittance growth stood at 6.6 percent to Rs 67.74 billion during the first four months of 2009/10. The government had received Rs 63.45 billion as remittance in the first six months of 2008/09, up 65.9 percent as compared to figures in the same period last year.
Though the number of overseas workers increased during the period, not all the destinations saw rise in the number of Nepali workers. The number of Nepali workers to Saudi Arabia and Malaysia - the largest and second largest job destinations for Nepal - went up to 30,067 and 35,940 respectively over the period, up from 25,444 and 24,049. However, departures of Nepali workers to Qatar and UAE went down from 40,526 and 17,957 to 28,448 to 17,191 respectively.
The number of Nepali workers leaving for different labor markets increased to 25,280 during mid-December to mid-January, up from 24,605 recorded in the preceding month.
According to DoFE, Qatar and Malaysia received 5,765 and 7,865 Nepali workers over the period, up from 5,689 and 7,456 recorded a month ago. UAE also saw the number of Nepali workers increase from 2,934 recorded last month to 3,900 in the review period.
However, departures to Saudi Arabia declined to 4,949 from 5,442 recorded a month ago.
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