EMPLOYER PERSPECTIVES

Nepal's major exports is labour, and most rural households now depend on at least one member's earnings from employment away from home and often from abroad. The economically active population is estimated to be 10.3 million. This includes 5.3 million males and 5 million females. The bulk of the economically active population is between the ages of 25 and 44. Every year, 3 Million (1.55 Male 1.45 Female) new workers are added to the Nepalese labour market but the economy has not been able to grow fast enough to absorb them. As a result, unemployment and underemployment rates are very high. Nepal has a long history of foreign employment in India, dating back to the beginning of the 19th century, when men from the hill areas of what was then known as Gorkha migrated westwards to the city of Lahore in the northern region of Punjab. There they joined up as soldiers in the army of the Sikh Rajah, Ranjit Singh. Even today, those working abroad are popularly known as "lahures." After a war in the Gorkha area with the British East India Company (1814-1816), an increasing number of "Gurkhas" (mostly, but not exclusively from present-day Nepal) also joined the British army in India, starting a tradition that continues today. Significant numbers of Nepali men were employed in the Indian Army through the 1950s and 1960s, and recruitment to the Indian police and other services, including the civil service, augmented the total of those employed in the public sector in India. Towards the end of the 1990s, some 250,000 Nepalese were employed in India's public sector, of whom perhaps 50,000 were in the army. With the approval of the Labor Act of 1985, the government of Nepal officially recognized the potential value of foreign labor migration "overseas," meaning beyond the Indian subcontinent. The government has done little since then to develop a coherent labor export policy or to provide any kind of training or support packages. The trade unions in Nepal are finally beginning to show an interest in overseas workers. Increasingly, during the latter part of the 1990s, Nepalese began to migrate to the Gulf countries for work, particularly to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Qatar. Within a short period, the number of manpower agencies operating in Kathmandu to recruit and send Nepalese to the Middle East had soared, as had the number of Nepalese migrating. The government's only contribution to this massive movement to the Gulf was to establish a consulate in Qatar to supplement the existing embassy in Saudi Arabia. End of 2011 December, 95 % of officially registered migrant workers (those recruited by recognized manpower agencies) were headed for the Gulf countries. An analysis of Nepali migrant workers over three and half million were migrant in end of year 2011 — by the Nepal Institute for Development Studies for UNIFEM, the women's fund at the United Nations — revealed that two-thirds of Nepalese working overseas were employed mainly in Malaysia ( 35 % ), Saudi Arabia ( 25 %), Qatar (20 %), and the UAE (10 %), and other countries ( 10 % ) . The total was estimated record from Labor department in 2011 (2067/68)