KATHMANDU, June 8: The government has rolled back its plan of employing all youths by Fiscal Year 2022/23, as per the recently announced budget and programs for Fiscal Year 2019/20.
The discontinuation of the ambitious plan of ‘ending compulsion of flying abroad for jobs’, as announced in last years’ budget and program, indicates that the first ‘stable’ government in two decades has also failed to create enough jobs in the country.
Lack of jobs at home has forced millions of youth, mostly unskilled laborers, to go abroad for jobs. Approximately 1,500 youths fly out of the country for labor on a daily basis.
A government official confirmed that the statement was omitted. However, he added that the government was focusing on generating employment in the country and not considering to promote foreign employment.
Labor experts were not surprised by the omission. They said the plan was deleted intentionally this year.
China accuses US of employing 'coercive diplomacy' on MCC grant...
Labor expert Ganesh Gurung said that the government must have realized that its previous announcement was impossible to achieve, so it withdrew the plan.
Gurung said lack of linkage between policy and implementation has been the underlying reason behind such policy failures.
Besides announcing a five-year targeted plan of generating enough employment in the country, the government-led by Khadga Prasad Oli had also aimed at creating 500,000 jobs, an estimated number of youths entering into the job market, in the current fiscal year.
Gurung said that the latter target was also impossible to achieve, adding that it has become a ritual to put such numbers in the annual budget and programs.
Prakash Dahal, joint secretary at the Ministry of Labor, argued that the announcement was not intentionally omitted, but just the priority was put differently.
Though the government has repeated the statement of creating 500,000 jobs in the next fiscal year, it does not have any method of counting the number of jobs created each year.
Despite high economic growth rate of near 7% in the current fiscal year, the actual volume of job creation is very low. This is because Nepal’s growth is largely driven by the services and trade sectors, while the growth rate of manufacturing and industry sectors, that can create jobs in sizable numbers, is on the decline.
Almost all the governments in the past years have been declaring to generate between 300,000 to 500,000 new jobs each year.
“We have started Prime Minister Employment Program (PMEP) in order to generate more jobs in the country, so that no one will have to fly abroad for jobs,” Dahal said.
The PMEP has a plan of providing a job for at least 100 days for a member of each family. The program, though started in the current fiscal year, has not employed anyone so far.
The government also has an obligatory provision of paying subsistence allowance to the unemployed youths if not a single person of their families are employed for a minimum 100 days in a year.
