DoFE directs manpower companies to use banking channel to collect fees

KATHMANDU:

Nepali foreign employment agencies will soon be barred from collecting service fees and other promotional costs directly from outbound workers. The government has given a deadline of February 5 to the agencies to compulsorily use the banking channel to collect such fees.

Issuing a notice on Tuesday, the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) said that a state minister-level meeting of the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) held on January 16 had taken the decision to implement the provision.

This decision has been taken with a target to better manage the foreign employment sector and hold recruiting agencies responsible for transparent business.

Earlier, in November last year, the International Relations and Labour Committee of the Legislature-Parliament had directed MoLE, DoFE and concerned stakeholders to ensure that agencies use the formal banking channel to collect fees from workers. The committee had also given an instruction whereby it had asked the agencies to pay their foreign partners through the banking channel but MoLE has remained silent on this issue.

The committee had issued this directive for foreign agencies to use the banking channel to collect fees and make payments after the number of cases of outbound workers facing problems of not being issued proper receipts for the sum they pay to agencies for overseas employment increased substantially.

And, this trend also has for long been affecting the investigations conducted by DoFE to provide compensation to the outbound workers who were duped by agencies.

As of now, manpower agencies can collect their fees in cash directly from workers or can also get it deposited in their bank accounts.

DoFE officials said that after the government’s recent decision, recruiting companies will be required to accept payments only through banks and the workers have to deposit the fees in the respective company’s bank account. They said that there were also cases of agencies collecting fees from workers even when the visa and ticket charges were being provided for by the employers.

In the first five months of the current fiscal year, a total of 1,224 cases seeking compensation worth Rs 317.87 million were filed at DoFE. Of them, 775 cases are related to workers demanding compensation from recruiting agencies, while the remaining are of those workers who obtained individual permits from DoFE to leave the country for employment without the involvement of agencies.

Source: THT