New provision made by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) has requested foreign labor working in Nepal’s aviation sector to submit their work agreement, labor approval, and non-tourist visa to the ministry within 6 months.
The ministry brought the new rule as the companies are hiring foreign workers without informing the ministry.
According to the new rule provided by the ministry, Airline companies will now have to keep advertisements for 15 days while hiring foreign citizens in their organization and submit work agreement, labor approval and recommendation of non-tourist visa to the Ministry within 6 months of expiry of advertisement. Previously concerned airlines companies had to submit the documents within a year of publishing the vacancy advertisements.
The ministry official said that the policy had to be changed to keep up to date information of every foreign worker as some companies started to bring new workers showing advertisements of more than a year ago. Ministry issued the guideline mainly focusing to paragliding companies the official added.
Work agreement is provided by Home Ministry, labor approval by ministry of Labor and non-tourist visa by Immigration department and to obtain those documents, the provision requires recommendations from CAAN as well as the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Foreign workers who are employed for less than 3 months do not require work agreement.
Addition of new aircraft has led to increment in demand of foreign workers and it is the only solution as they are only capable ones to perform the work. Secretary of Airlines Operators Association of Nepal Raju Neupane said that workers must be arranged from abroad until technical manpower can be found in Nepal.
Airlines Company with Airbus and Helicopter company hire more foreign manpower as Airbus has only recently entered into Nepal, there are a lack of Nepali manpower who can operate these aircraft and it costs 10 million to produce a helicopter pilot, and a further 5 years to produce an experienced helicopter pilot thus discouraging Nepalese towards the helicopter pilot profession.
