KATHMANDU: The Nepal government has been conducting skill-orientated training in collaboration with the private sector targeting out-bound migrant youths.

The Foreign Employment Promotion Board (FEPB) Secretariat under the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security has already selected 15 training providing institutes to train over 15,000 individuals in the fiscal year 2019/20.
The FEPB has announced that it would provide training under 19 different topics.

The Board has been conducting training under various topics for the last seven years. Over 30,000 youths have received training over this period.

A total of Rs 4 billion has been spent so far. The government has allocated Rs 2.5 million to provide training for 15,000 youths in the current fiscal, Rajan Shrestha, executive director of the Board, told Khabarhub.

The training would be free of cost. “The Board is currently holding a discussion on technical aspects of the training,” said Shrestha, adding, “The coordination is underway with those institutes having sufficient infrastructure.”

Similarly, the Safe Migration Project (SaMi), a project implemented by Helvetas, has been providing free training to out-bound migrants for the last 10 years. As many as 9, 465 aspirant migrant workers have received training between the year 2011 and 2018. Rs 5 billion has been spent on conducting training.

The government has allocated Rs 2.5 million to provide training for 15,000 youths in the current fiscal, Rajan Shrestha, executive director of the Board, told Khabarhub.

Helvetas Nepal is set to provide training to 7,000 Nepali foreign job aspirants under SaMi project in collaboration with the Nepal government and Swiss government, allocating Rs 2.38 billion for the project. However, there is no guarantee that the target group will benefit from this billion rupees worth project.

The training providing company is itself uninformed of the status of the Nepali youths whether they are in foreign land or in Nepal after training from this project, said Sita Ghimire, program director of SaMi. The training including food and lodging are free of cost, added Ghimire.

“SaMi has been providing skill-based training to out-bound migrant workers free of cost for the last 10 years. Twenty migrant resource centers are in operation. Preparations are underway to add 20 additional resource centers,” said Ghimire, adding, the project aims at proving information about safe migration to over 600,000 youths.”

Will youths go abroad after training?
It has been a matter of concern whether youths will really go abroad after training. The regulatory body has not kept the record of the training receivers nor has it reviewed whether the project has achieved its goal.

Nepali migrant workers get lower remuneration compared to those from the other countries on account of being unskilled. The government is uninformed whether those who receive training from government bodies and other institutes will really go abroad for foreign employment.

The training providing company is itself uninformed of the status of the Nepali youths whether they are in foreign land or in Nepal after training from this project, said Sita Ghimire, program director of SaMi.

In the fiscal year 2018/19, a total of 285, 445 unskilled Nepali youths left Nepal for foreign employment. Only 179, 601 skilled youths left for foreign employment, according to the record maintained by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE).

The unskilled Nepali migrants outnumber the skilled ones by 105, 844.

According to the record of the DoFE, 70 percent out of 508,827 migrant workers receiving labor permit were found unskilled.

The skilled migrant workers are found to be enjoying pay perks as per the contract in foreign countries while those who lack it do not.

The government has set a goal to supply only skilled manpower to foreign countries and made a skill-based training certificate mandatory for acquiring labor permit effective from this fiscal year, said Bhishma Bhushal, director-general of the DoFE.