In the previous years, the nation was able to achieve economic growth by increasing poor and backward people’s access to capital, technology, and local resources via the various programme.
However, in the current Fiscal Year, the COVID-19 pandemic posed many unprecedented challenges to the government’s drive to alleviate poverty and ensure employment opportunities for all.
According to the Economic Survey of FY 2020/21, owing to the pandemic, it has become tough for the government to limit absolute poverty to below 10 per cent by the FY 2022/23. However, due to the increased investment in the area of health and education by the government and private sectors, the indicators relating to child mortality rate and school education observed a steady growth.
In the current FY, housing reconstruction programmes for earthquake victims were implemented effectively, thatched-roof houses were successfully replaced with corrugated sheet roofs and everyone’s access to drinking water was ensured.
Similarly, improvement in basic public services with social mobilisation of targeted programmes aided in improving the multi-dimensional poverty index.
Nevertheless, due to the pandemic, it has become challenging to drip multi-dimensional poverty to 11.5 per cent by FU 2022/23 as per the 15th national plan.
Meanwhile, according to the 2020 report of the United Nation’s Development Project (UNDP), this year, Nepal’s Human Development Index (HDI) has increased to 0.602 from 0.579 last year.
Labour and Employment According to the Economic Survey, the Prime Minister Employment Programme has been introduced at all local levels to ensure minimum employment opportunities for all citizens.
A total of 105,635 people, including 15,048 in Province 1, 9,484 in Province 2, 14,355 in Bagmati, 9,611 in Gandaki, 21,123 in Lumbini, 16,438 in Karnali and 19,576 in Sudurpaschim Province received employment opportunity via Prime Minister Employment Programme.
Similarly, the Terai Madhes Prosperity Programme was operated via 570 projects in 278 local levels of 22 Terai districts having the least HDI in the country.
However, as the domestic and foreign employment market had been hit hard by the pandemic, it became challenging to achieve the target of providing employment to 33,000 people in the public sector, 350,000 in the private sector, and 85,000 in the cooperatives sector.
Meanwhile, a total of 26 local levels have prepared work plans to declare themselves as child labour-free local levels in the current FY. In comparison to the number of Nepalis flying abroad for employment, the number of foreigners entering Nepal for jobs is very low.
Until March of FY 2020/21, work permits were provided to 575 foreigners and 844 permits were renewed. The survey report revealed that a total of 624,661 people are currently employed in 8,384 large, small and medium-scale industries across the nation.
Similarly, 4,557 citizens became self-employed via the Youth and Small Entrepreneurs Self-employment Fund. Of the self-employed youths, 1,498 entrepreneurs and business have been insured.
As many as 88,288 direct and1.1 million indirect employments were generated from cooperatives sectors until March of current FY. Foreign EmploymentAs per the Economic Survey, a total of 4,466,973 people including 4,248,547 males and 218,426 females are currently in a foreign land for employment.
In the ongoing FY, 33,161 people received a work permit to fly abroad for job security. Of those who went abroad for employment, 28 per cent each went to Malaysia and Qatar, 21 per cent to Saudi Arabia, 14 per cent to UAE, three per cent to Kuwait and the remaining six per cent flew to other nations. Until now, 858 manpower companies have obtained a license to send people to 110 countries for employment and of the 858 companies, 818 are active and 40 are inactive.
Source : THE RISING NEPAL,
