Following an agreement with the two factions of the agitating recruitment agencies, the Department of Foreign Employment resumed services on Sunday. The frontline office that receives around 2,000 service seekers each day had been unable to deliver services smoothly for the last few weeks due to the protest of the two factions of the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA).

DoFE officials said the office has begun catering to the needs of both kinds of workers—those coming through organisational and individual channels. They said the office will need a few more weeks to clear the work backlog caused by the service disruption.

“There will obviously be additional workload as we have not been able to deliver proper services in the last few weeks,” said DoFE spokesperson Divash Acharya. Although actual data is hard to come by, NAFEA and the Department have estimated that the protest could have affected around 15,000 overseas job aspirants.

An agitating NAFEA faction on Friday withdrew the protest after the Ministry of Labour and Employment agreed to address its 11-point demand. The demands include resolving NAFEA’s internal disputes, scrapping “unfriendly” foreign employment laws, policies and regulations and guaranteeing hassle-free services.

“They [government officials] have given written commitment to address our demands,” said Kamal Tamang, former NAFEA secretary. He said the disgruntled faction has collected signatures of more than two-thirds of members to impeach NAFEA Chairman Bal Bahadur Tamang. “We are still collecting signatures. He will be impeached after signature verification at the District Administration Office,” said Tamang. The establishment faction headed by Tamang called a strike a few days before another called by the disgruntled faction that was withdrawn.

The department had been unable to provide prompt services for the last few weeks after the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority arrested some three dozen officials and four manpower operators on bribery charges. The two factions have been protesting after stakeholders including the DoFE and the Tribhuvan International Airport Immigration acted tough against the anomalies surrounding the foreign employment sector.

Published on: 23 September 2013 | The Kathmandu Post