25 March, Kathmandu. From now on, workers going for foreign employment have to show additional documents at the airport.

With effect from 29 March, the Foreign Employment Department has made it compulsory to show air tickets and their bills and receipts, as well as receipts of service fees paid to manpower companies.

The department has arranged that the air ticket to the destination country and the bill/receipt of the same ticket (both institutional and personal) must be kept with them.

Likewise, the workers who go through the manpower company have to show the official receipt for the service fee paid to the said company for foreign employment.

The department also requests the manpower businessmen to provide vouchers/receipts/reimbursements for the service fees received from the laborers going abroad.

The decision of the department is not immediately practical and suggested to be implemented only after the policy reforms, the manpower professionals have suggested.

The Nepal Foreign Employment Professionals Association has requested the Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Security, Deepak Kumar Sah, to reconsider the decision immediately.

Submitting 7-point suggestions to Minister Shah, the union said that service charge receipts and air ticket bills will not be effective unless there is a mandatory policy reform. The union said that such actions can only be done through policy reforms.

The Ministry of Labor has also warned that action will be taken if the service fee is more than 10,000 rupees and sent for foreign employment.

Labor Minister Shah has issued a video message and said that action will be taken according to the Foreign Employment Act if found to have taken more than 10,000 rupees.

However, the manpower professionals have expressed dissatisfaction with the arrangement made by the department. Their argument is that if such an arrangement is made without policy reform, the workers themselves will suffer.

Union Secretary General Mahesh Basnet said that since the Foreign Employment Act is being amended, it should be done only after policy reform.

He says that without policy reforms related to foreign employment, decisions that add more administrative hassles should not be implemented.

According to Basnet, as the Foreign Employment Act 2064 is currently in the process of amendment, there is a need for policy reform first.

“There are many errors in the law, practically many things are not compatible, adding new complications without correcting them is not appropriate,” he said.

He argued that the decision to make tickets and bills mandatory was not practical. ‘In most cases, the ticket comes from the employer company, in such cases the bill is not available,’ he said.

He says that the current system is not compatible with the age of digital technology. “Where has the world come today, but we are still sending the workers with a heavy load of documents,” he said, “When we have to go to the digital system, on the contrary, the paper hassle has been increased.”

He said that the ‘free visa, free ticket’ policy has also created problems in practice. He said that according to the law, workers cannot buy tickets and even manpower companies cannot collect tickets, but in practice, the workers have to bear the cost of tickets.

“There is a big difference between the law and practice, in such a situation, the decision to make the bill mandatory will cause more suffering to the workers,” said Basnet.

According to him, the government’s main focus should be on the safety of workers. “It is important to check whether the workers’ passports, visas and tickets are correct, adding unnecessary paperwork should not discourage both workers and businessmen,” he said.

Basnet also said that policy reforms are needed in the matter of service charges. For this, the Ministry has formed a working group under the leadership of the Joint Secretary. And, based on the report of the working group, the ministry said that it will correct the errors in the laws, regulations and standards.

Even before this, the Ministry of Labor has been studying the problems seen in the foreign employment sector and forming a task force for reforms.

The outgoing Labor Minister Rajendra Singh Bhandari also asked to form a working group and study. The working group had studied and prepared the necessary report and made suggestions.

Minister Sah says that necessary improvements will be made based on the report of the working group on the issues raised by the businessmen. In the discussion held on Tuesday with the representatives of business associations, Minister Shah said that he was trying to effectively implement the previous decisions without making any new decisions.