A labor agreement was signed between Nepal and Saudi Arabia in Riyadh on Sunday to make the recruitment process of Nepali workers going to Saudi Arabia transparent and ensure the rights of workers. Efforts to sign a labor agreement between the two countries had been underway for a decade.

The agreement was signed by Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security Rajendra Singh Bhandari and his Saudi counterpart, Minister of Human Resources and Social Development Ahmed bin Sulaiman Al-Razi. Al-Razi has been leading the Ministry of Human Resources since 2018. The number of countries with which Nepal has signed labor agreements has reached 13. Now, among the Gulf countries, only an agreement is yet to be signed with Kuwait. An agreement has been reached with Oman on the draft. 

In the last week of May, in Geneva, the then Minister for Labor, Employment and Social Security Sharat Singh Bhandari and Saudi Arabia's Deputy Minister for International Affairs Tariq Al-Hamad agreed to sign a general labor agreement, leaving aside the agreement on domestic workers. The ministry has stated that it will do more homework for the agreement on domestic workers. 

It is believed that the agreement will provide more opportunities for Nepali workers going to the Saudi labor market, prioritize a transparent recruitment process to protect against human trafficking, and respect the rights of workers and employers. 'This issue has been coming up for a long time. Saudi Arabia used to emphasize labor agreements mostly on domestic workers. We had emphasized more on general workers. Saudi Arabia was not happy with the provisions related to the protection of domestic workers that we had put in place. They were not happy with what we said, so it was moving forward,” former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Udaya Raj Pandey told Kantipur. “This agreement has paved the way for formally raising issues related to the rights of Nepali workers.” 

The Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security has stated that the agreement was reached by prioritizing the labor standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The ministry says that the agreement addresses issues such as salary security for Nepali workers working there as per Saudi labor laws, ending double contracts, controlling excessive costs, ending fraud by manpower companies, and access to justice for workers. 

According to former Secretary Purna Chandra Bhattarai, who is also an expert in labor administration, both the sending and receiving countries are committed to strengthening labor relations. “Both Nepal and Saudi Arabia have expressed their commitment to maintaining serious labor relations. This is very important. The agreement addresses the issues of workers in some way or the other,' he said, 'It has ensured the facilities available to Nepali workers within the Saudi institutional system.'

According to Bhattarai, it will now be easier to manage labor disputes between employers and workers. 'We did not have written documents regarding the movement of workers to Saudi Arabia. Now this agreement has strengthened the legal basis for protecting workers,' he said, 'Our embassy can use this labor agreement as a basis to discuss with various Saudi bodies and raise a stronger voice for the interests of its workers.'

The agreement states that the contractual agreement between the employer and the worker in Nepal will be given legitimacy. This will ensure the workers the salary and service facilities mentioned in the contract signed with the manpower on behalf of the employer. Nepal has fixed a salary of one thousand riyals for unskilled workers and three hundred riyals for food. 

A joint technical committee consisting of at least six members of officials from the two countries has been formed to effectively implement the labor agreement. It will monitor and evaluate the implementation of the agreement. Former Ambassador Pandey said that the joint committee should be made effective to cover the issues left in the agreement. ‘The existing bilateral mechanism reviews it. The renewal process is underway. If any shortcomings are found, then they should be improved in the next phase tomorrow,’ he said, ‘This mechanism should be made active. Whether the agreement will be successfully implemented or not is also linked to the activity of the mechanism. This is the forum where the issues of workers will be formally raised.’ 

According to Pandey, the contract has become double-barreled as Saudi Arabia itself has not fixed the minimum wage and there is no 24-hour life insurance. According to the Ministry of Labor, 684 Nepali workers have died in the last two fiscal years. Most of them died of heart attacks and outside the workplace. In such deaths, the concerned family is deprived of compensation. ‘They say that insurance will be provided only during working hours, but sometimes it takes an hour to reach the factory from the camp where the workers are staying. "At that time, if there is an accident and death while sleeping in the camp, there is no compensation from the insurance," said Pandey. "After death, it takes a long time to complete many unnecessary procedures to send the body. It should be simplified. There is an issue of unnecessary financial exploitation when sending workers. There should be a careful hearing on how to end such exploitation."