The government has introduced two different stickers for migrant workers joining jobs in foreign destinations. According to the Department of Foreign Employment, the stickers were issued along with foreign job permits from Wednesday.

The department has started attaching the stickers on passports to control fraud in the foreign employment sector. “We are issuing red stickers for organisational migrant workers and green for individual migrants,” said director at the department Kashiraj Dahal. Organisational migrant workers are those who join foreign jobs through outsourcing agencies.

According to him, both stickers are permanently attached to the passport and it will help identify the actual status of migrant workers. The sticker provides information about sending agencies, job nature and title, destination country, town and foreign job permit number, he said, adding the number of fraud cases will reduce through the provision.

It has been usually found that outsourcing agencies offer one type of job to workers during recruitment but send them for other types of jobs and it often creates problems at the job place. A significant fall in salary and benefits to workers has been noticed due to cheating by outsourcing agencies.

The department introduced the stickers on the advice of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority, National Vigilance Centre, and Prime Minister’s Office. They had directed the department to adopt such a measure to control outsourcing frauds.

Saudi Arabia downsizes outsourcers

Kathmandu: Saudi Arabia has reduced the number of its human resource outsourcing agencies to 10 for better monitoring services. It is one of the major problematic destinations in the Gulf region where about 200 migrant workers lose their lives annually. It has selected 10 outsourcing agencies to hire foreign workers and banned middlemen, said Nepali ambassador to Saudi Arabia Udaya Raj Pandey. “Saudi Arabia has increased the guarantee of outsourcing agencies to $5 million,” he said, “From next month, Nepali outsourcing agencies will get a direct demand from the firms.” Likewise, Saudi Arabia also started to rate its industries and businesses according to their conduct with migrant workers. According to the policy, companies in the ‘red zone’ will not be allowed to hire foreign workers.

Published on: 27 May 2012 | The Himalayan Times