The number of complaints lodged against unauthorized individual foreign employment agents in Nepal declined dramatically by 48 percent in the first two months of the current fiscal year starting in mid-July.

Thursday's report of the Department of Labor and Employment Promotion (DoLEP) stated that a total of 69 complaints were lodged against individual agents during the period, as against 135 cases registered in the same period last year.

The victims, who filed cases against individual foreign employment agents demanded compensation amounting to 17.85 million Nepali rupees (244,520 US dollars) in the review period, compared to 36.79 million rupees (503,772 dollars) of the similar period last year.

The foreign job aspirants filed the cases charging individual foreign employment agents of absconding with their money by giving them false promises of placements in various foreign companies or by recruiting them in foreign companies breaching terms and conditions of the job contract, the department stated.

Talking to reporters, under secretary at Ministry of Labor and Transport Management Uddhav Banskota attributed the decline to the awareness campaign launched by the ministry and recruitment of additional manpower to look into individual fraud cases.

"In the past, we had not been able to look into individual cases more effectively due to lack of human resources," he said.

Although government attempts to curb illegal activities of individual agents may have borne fruit, the report showed that it still has not succeeded in providing proper compensation to the victims.

Source: Xinhua