Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security Deepak Kumar Shah on Sunday directed to end the token system in labor permits and ensure that labor permits are issued on the same day of application.
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The Department of Foreign Employment has issued 3,100 work permits on Monday, the first day after the token system was removed. Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security Deepak Kumar Shah had directed to end the token system in work permits on Sunday and provide work permits on the same day of application.
‘We had implemented the token system on a first-come, first-served basis.’ We have eliminated this and made it queue-free. 3,100 people have received work permits on the first day itself,’ Mira Acharya, Director General of the department, told Ikantipur.
This is a work permit issued by the department, labor office and Nepali embassies abroad affiliated with the Foreign Employment Information Management System (FEMIS). The department and 7 labor offices in the provinces have made arrangements to issue individual, institutional and re-work permits. Nepali embassies abroad have only issued re-work permits.
The department had previously issued 3,500 online tokens considering the pressure on FEMIS. ‘You don’t have to be physically present with a file for labor approval. We provide all services online. Now, even if more than 3,500 labor approvals are applied for online, labor approvals are issued,’ she said. ‘If you apply with all the documents required by law, it won’t take a day. It will be done in an hour.’
She said that if there is a shortage of manpower, discussions will be held with the ministry for additional manpower. ‘Employees from other branches of the department other than labor approvals may also be mobilized for this work. Attention should also be paid to the service flow provided by other branches,’ she said.
FEMIS can handle the pressure of up to 1,600 service recipients (users) at a time. If more than that number of users enter FEMIS, there is a risk of ‘system down’.
Even before this, the FEMIS system has been disrupted when many service recipients come at the same time. The Ministry of Finance has allocated a budget for the current fiscal year to increase the capacity of the FEMIS system. The department has stated that internal homework is being done for this.
