Outsourcers Slip into Black Day Mode

The Nepali foreign employment sector observed Black Day today remembering the devastation of September 1, 2004 when angry mobs had looted and burnt around 325 outsourcing agencies after 12 Nepali migrant workers are killed in Iraq by a terrorist group.

Outsourcing agency owners and officers sported black armbands. Foreign employment agencies stayed closed for the day, said Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) general secrtary Gyanu Gaire.

Executive members of NAFEA meet Minister for Labour and Transport Management (MoLTM) Mohammed Abdul Alam and urged him to release the investigation report and provide compensation to outsourcing agencies. "The government must release the report,"

said NAFEA acting president Kamal Dev Malla. According to NAFEA, the mobs destroyed property worth to Rs 2 billion of outsourcing agencies based in downtown Kathmandu and Patan.

The then government had formed an investigation commission under the chairmanship of former Supreme Court judge Top Bahadur Rayamajhi. However, till date the report has not been released. A MoLTM source claimed that the investigation had pointed out that security failure was the cause of rampant destruction of manpower agencies' offices, and so the government was reluctant to release the report. Minister Alam assured NAFEA executives that he would work to solve their problems. "I will genuinely work to release the report,"

he said, "I will talk to the Prime Minister about it. You should get compensation,"

he said addressing the team in his office.

NAFEA also asked Minister Alam to stop transmission of unauthorized advertisements in the Nepali media.

"FMs radio stations outside Kathmandu Valley are transmitting foreign employment advertisements without authorization of DoFE," said Gaire. The Foreign Employment Act strictly prohibits advertisements without permission from the department.

The outsourcers' protest paralyzed the whole foreign employment sector. The Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) do not issued even a single permit today.

"There was no file from outsourcing agencies today, so we concentrated on internal works," said DoFE director Uma Shankar Joshi.