August 2: Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security, Sher Bahadur Kunwar, has pressed for the idea of creating a job atmosphere for domestic workforce within the country.    
During a meeting of the Industry, Commerce, Labour, and Consumers Welfare Committee, of the House of Representatives on Monday, the minister said aspiring domestic workforce should be encouraged to explore work opportunities within the country. The meeting focused on issues concerning foreign employment and labour.    
The minister said that Nepal has been a good labour market for the people from India while Nepali workers go abroad seeking employment opportunities. It is necessary to make the workers here aware that they can find a labour market within the country and it could pay them as equally as the foreign employment.    
He insisted on sending only the people with adequate skills to foreign jobs, suggesting for the management of domestic workforce internally.    
Committee President Bimal Shriwastav was of the opinion of creating jobs for domestic workforce.  He shared that during a monitoring of a steel industry, it was found that the number of workers from India was double than that of domestic workers and the scenario suggested the possibility of managing probable workforce internally.    
Secretary at the labour ministry, Eknarayan Aryal said the ministry is working to promote internal labour market and at present, 145,113 are employed under the Prime Minister Employment Programme.    
According to Director General of Department of Labour and Occupational Safety, Umakant Acharya, industrialists said they preferred workforce from outside the country as they performed more responsibly than domestic workers.    
Director General at the Department of Foreign Employment Shesh Narayan Paudel said there was a drop in number of Nepali nationals going abroad for jobs during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic and the figure had started going up with the slowdown in infection rate.    
According to Paudel, 642,000 people went for foreign employment in the fiscal year 2016-17 and this figure dropped to 166,000 during FY 2020-21 and it rose to 621,000 last fiscal year (FY 2021-22). -- RSS