Om Thapaliya, 55, is the Executive Director at Homenet Nepal (HNN), a member-based organization that works with vision to improve the living of home-based workers facilitating them to acquire better livelihood by providing various skill based jobs including wood carving, boutique, weaving and construction.

Established in 2000, it has been running its services in six branches one located in Shankharapur, three in Chapagaun, one in Lalitpur and one in Kirtipur. With a vision to increase productivity and alleviate poverty through skilled home-based workers, Thapaliya has been advocating the rights of home-based workers not only in the country but also in the international arena. 
In an interview with My City’s Sonam Lama, Thapaliya talked about his experience of catering for the home-based workers in Nepal.

What community programs and project have you been running?
Boosting homemade production is our key objective so regardless of any area of work we try to connect to the workers through group production unit. We have established GPU (Group Production Unit) in eight different areas where many home based workers especially women have been directly benefited. The current project ‘Urban Job Hub’ has been providing an access to new workers keen to collaborate with us.

As per the project, we make the interested workers fill up a form explaining about their personal detail and work interest. According to their interest and skills we provide them with the platform to hone their skills and be independent. After three months of training, 180 workers so far have been employed under the project. And we have succeeded to promote Nepali home-made brands through home based workers.

How sensitive do you think is the country’s government toward Labor Rights?

Nepal has so far ratified 11 conventions of International Labor Organization however; it is yet to ratify ‘Convention 177: Home Work Convention’ which elaborates on the rights and duties of home workers.  As it is only after the ratification of convention that further promulgates the law and provision concerning home based workers. In my view, we can create sound and productive environment for the labors, especially home based workers if we can ratify the convention at the first place.

Thousands of home based workers work under your organization, how do you confirm their physical, psychological and financial safety?

Working as a medium between the firms or organizations and its employees, we primarily make sure to address the needs and demands of both the sides. After that, the workers go through a few sessions of orientation where they are made aware and familiar to possible situations. We also provide training to the workers and approach placement organizations on their behalf. Running meeting and speculation is also an important part of our work mechanism and if in case of worker’s violence, we seek to solve it through legal procedure.

What measures can be adopted to improve the scenario of home based workers?

Many international brands get a huge market in Nepal. It is not that we cannot produce quality home made products here. We can expand the local market by producing quality products and promote it to the international market through the help of new technologies. Due to the lack of resources the remuneration of workers is affected as the wage of the sold product gets divided to many middlemen. Therefore, such practices should be worked upon. Moreover, the laws and conventions regarding labor rights should be strictly implemented to fight labor exploitation.

What are your future plans?

We are currently running in six districts. Our future plan is to reach out to the rest of the home based workers and expand our services in rural districts of Nepal. Every district has its diverse significance to contribute to national economy through providing employment to every worker. So, we are looking forward to empowering workers from all possible parts of Nepal. Moreover, it is equally important to maintain transparency so that the workers can also benefit out of it. On that note, we have also been planning to promote ‘clean cloth campaign’ that pertains to preserve the rights of workers assuring their wage as per the provision of Labor Act. We have so far been focused on adult workers only, but we would also like to extend out services providing vocational trainings to the street children.