A labour agreement related to the recruitment of Nepalese workers was signed between Nepal and Saudi Arabia for the first time on Sunday evening in Saudi capital Riyadh.
Labor, Employment and Social Security Minister RajendraSinh Bhandari led a three-member team to Saudi Arabia to sign the agreement.
The draft was being worked on for a decade to sign a labor agreement between Saudi Arabia and Nepal, the main destination of Nepali workers. Labor Minister Bhandari and his Saudi counterpart Human Resources and Social Development Minister Ahmad bin SulaimanAlRajhiare signing the agreement. Since 2018, Al Raji has been heading the Ministry of Human Resources.
In the last week of May, the then Labor, Employment and Social Security Minister Sharat Singh Bhandari and Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Minister of International Affairs, Tariq Al Hamad, reached an agreement in Geneva to make a general labor agreement, leaving aside the agreement on domestic workers. The Ministry has said that more homework will be done for the contract related to domestic workers.
The labor agreement aims to provide more opportunities to Nepali workers going to the Saudi labor market, prioritize transparent recruitment process to protect against human trafficking, and respect the rights of workers and employers.
The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security has stated that it is going to make an agreement by giving priority to the labor standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO). According to the Saudi labor law, the security of salary of Nepali workers working in Saudi Arabia, end of double contracts, control of excessive costs, end of fraud by manpower companies, and access to justice for workers are addressed in the agreement.
Four lakh Nepalis are currently working in Saudi Arabia. Most of them are in the construction and service sectors. In the last 10 years, 1,352,800 people have worked in Saudi Arabia alone. In which there are 111,000 women workers. In the financial year 2081/82, 152,000 people went again with work permits. It is mentioned in the latest report of the Ministry of Labor that 684 people died in Saudi Arabia within the last two financial years.
