Madhu Shahi, KATHMANDU:- Dhruba Vishal, who was about to leave for Dubai, wanted to work in his home country. Vishal, 37, from Dang Ghorahi, who was met at Tribhuvan International Airport, worked in Kathmandu from collecting garbage to working as a waiter in a hotel. However, in all those places, he did not receive proper remuneration and timely salary. He said, “I did not get the value of my hard work, that is why I am going abroad.”

Gunjan Tamang from Dhankuta works in the entertainment sector. He has been working in this sector for nine months. He complained that he had to work in four places in nine months due to not getting proper remuneration and the insulting behavior of his moneylenders at work. “Why stay when we are not paid,” he said, “In the entertainment sector, we are insulted by our moneylenders, customers and even neighbors.” He also said that he has already made a passport to go for foreign employment due to the lack of job stability.

According to the statistics of the Department of Foreign Employment, 62,265 people have gone for foreign employment in the last one month. Labor rights activist Naveen Kumar believes that workers are forced to go abroad due to lack of employment opportunities in their home country and lack of proper respect for labor. According to a study by GEFONT, there are more than 13 million workers in Nepal so far. However, the physical, mental and social security of these workers has not yet been managed. “The situation of workers who do not receive minimum wages and equal benefits is still the same,” he said, “which is why the younger generation is going abroad for work due to dissatisfaction.”

According to the latest report of the National Statistics Office, the youth unemployment rate in Nepal is 12.7 percent. Among them, the youth aged 15 to 25 years are the most unemployed. According to the data, only 37.5 percent of the population participates in the labor market.

Article 23 of the Constitution of Nepal has included the right to employment as a fundamental right. The Right to Employment Act, 2075 has been issued to implement the same right. The government had also announced that it would create employment opportunities in public development works through the policies and programs and budget for the fiscal year 2075-76 and end the situation where any Nepali citizen has to go for forced foreign employment in the next five years. But that announcement could not be implemented.

The Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security has been operating a digital app called ‘Shram Sansar Prasad’ since April 2081 to create employment in the country. The number of people seeking employment through the app is 96,973. However, the number of people who have found employment is only nine.

The ministry’s engineer Indra Narayan Yadav said that the number of people getting jobs is low because the app allows people to ‘enter’ when looking for a job, but does not record the information received after getting it. “There is no shortage of jobs, the labor market system has made it easy if you can search,” he said. RSS