Labor migration going digital

PRABHAKAR GHIMIRE

The days of job seekers wandering from place to place for information about foreign job opportunities are to end soon. The chaos resulting from fake documentation has been reduced significantly.

Foreign employment-related information exchange among offices concerned and Nepali missions abroad has strengthened over the year. These are some of the achievements realized through increasing use of Information Technology (IT) in regulating Nepal’s ill-managed labor migration abroad.

With the help of the official website of the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE)—www.dofe.gov.np, any job aspirant can get detailed information about job opportunities in a destination country, the category of workers demanded, the manpower agencies brokering the jobs, demand letters from employers, and other matters.

Fake documentation--- a key factor behind different problems facing Nepali workers abroad---has been greatly discouraged through introduction of IT in the foreign employment process.

Fake documentation--- a key factor behind different problems facing Nepali workers abroad---has been greatly discouraged through introduction of IT in the foreign employment process. Experience of more than two decades shows that fake documents are behind most of the problems facing Nepali migrant workers. Past efforts to curb cheating by employers and manpower agents could not minimize the problem until quite recently. With the use of IT at DoFE, the cases of submission of fake foreign employment-related documents by recruiting agencies here and abroad have come down. DoFE has introduced IT-based electronics in the verification and archiving of documents and in controlling irregularities in foreign employment. Enhanced Migrant Worker Information Management System (E-MWIMS) is used to store, preserve and retrieve information about workers who have left for foreign jobs with government permission. “We have kept electronic records at E-MWIMS on over two million workers who have left for overseas and this enables us to easily access particulars about any worker. This system has proved to be especially useful for accessing information on those who want to re-enter the foreign labor market after returning home,” said Purna Chandra Bhattarai, director general of DoFE. With E-MWIMS, renewal of labor permission for those wishing to re-enter the foreign labor market is easier. Electronic data has been shared among key agencies involved in regulating foreign employment, such as DoFE, the Tribuvan International Airport Labor Desk and Nepali missions abroad. “We have provided an Access Code to Nepali missions abroad to enable them to access information about any Nepali migrant immediately. The government can coordinate with Nepali embassies abroad to deal with any problems facing workers,” said Bhattarai. Nepali embassies in India, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait have been lined with the Access Code since the last three months. To deal with the practice of using fake stickers for labor permission, the government went automatic three weeks back, introducing a digital sticker system integrated with a Quick Response (QR) Bar Code. “We can immediately verify the sticker’s authenticity with a testing machine that reads the Bar Code. We have initiated the system to verify stickers for jobs under institutional channels,” Bhattarai said. The bar code in the sticker can display photos and information of up to 1,800 characters. To make transactions transparent, CCTV monitoring and recording at eight points at DoFE was initiated a year and half back. Bank vouchers have also been integrated with E-MWIMS. Long term vision DoFE is planning a Personalized Web Application to establish a daily record of workers leaving for foreign employment. Web Application will be automatized and linked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and DoFE. DoFe is also planning to enable recruiting agencies to enter data themselves and link DoFE with health institutions issuing medical reports, insurance companies and foreign employment orientation centers.
Published on 2013-02-06 11:30:11