On Monday, the government stopped issuing 'pre-approval' to work permit applications made by foreign employment firms that did cover the round-trip airfare and visa fees of the workers. In reply, foreign employment firms on Wednesday shut down their offices all together and announced that they would not process the recruitment of migrant workers for an indefinite period.
Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (Nafea) has announced protests, including the closure of their offices for an indefinite period.
The foreign employment firms' representative led staged a sit-in in front of the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) offices at Labor Village in Tahachal to protest the government's decision to enforce a 'minimum cost system' for the migrant workers.
Earlier on June 9, MoLE, acting through a state minister-level decision, introduced a provision on issuing work permits to workers only if the recipient companies agreed to cover the round-trip airfare and visa fees for them and not deduct such expenses from the workers' remuneration.
MoLE had introduced the provision for Malaysia as well as Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait. If the provision comes into force, an aspiring worker bound for any of these destinations would have to pay only Rs 17,000.
Representatives of the foreign employment firms have said that they will stop processing the recruitment process until the government withdraws a 'zero cost' to the workers provision.
"We oppose the government's unilateral decision to enforce the system without assessing its repercussion on the foreign employment business as well as its impact on the demand for Nepali workers from foreign destinations. We have shut down our offices to come to the streets to press the government," Nafea's general secretary Rohan Tamang told Republica.
According to Tamang, Nafea members will not stop sending those workers who have already received final approval. "The pre-approval, interview, visa and final approval process will be stopped by the foreign employment firms," he said. "A few hundred workers who have already received final approval will get to leave the country. From Friday or Saturday, the number of people who leave the country for foreign employment will come down from nearly 1,500 a day to zero," he added.
The protestors gathered at Labor Village did not even allow the foreign employment firms having job demands to process their 'pre approval' applications at DoFE.
According to Biswa Prakash Subedi, under secretary at DoFE, only 600 individual workers acquired work permits from the department on Wednesday. "There was a protest at the gates of our offices so none of the foreign employment firms came to the offices to acquire pre or final approval for their foreign-bound workers," Subedi said. He also said that DoFE used to issue around 1,500 approvals on an average day in recent weeks.
He also said that the department had stopped issuing approval for work permits if the respective employers did not cover airfare and visa fees of the workers.
Meanwhile, Nafea has said that it is ready to withdraw its protest if the government decides to suspend the 'free airfare and visa' provision for six months. "We are ready to consider our protest if the government withdraws from its decision for six months and agrees to implement it in a phase-wise manner after completing the necessary homework -- like consultation with stakeholders and signing of labor agreements," Nafea General Secretary Tamang added.
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