Complaints against manpower agencies on decline, says DLEP

Kathmandu, Aug 23: Department of Labour and Employment Promotion (DLEP) claimed that the number of complaints filed against individual agents and foreign employment agencies on charges of forgery has declined by around 19 per cent in the first six months of 2005.According to the department, they received 456 complaints in the first six months of 2005 as against the 570 during the same period last year despite the fact that there has been 25 per cent increase in the number of workers going abroad.The complaints were lodged against individual agents and manpower companies demanding compensations for either leaving them stranded in the country or abroad, or for recruiting them by violating the terms and conditions of the contract paper during the period between mid-January till date.DLEP statistics have revealed that of the total compensation of Rs 95.9 million demanded by victims in 2005, the government had recovered Rs 21.3 million, which is 22 percent of the total amount.When comparing these figures with that of 25.5 per cent recovered last year, the recovery percentage has gone down.The department managed to get back a total of Rs. 106.8 million that had been swindled by private manpower companies last year and compensated Rs 27.2 million to the victims.Statistics of DLEP shows that of the total amount of Rs 30.7 million misappropriated by the manpower agencies, the government has compensated Rs 11.7 million to the victims this year - almost 38 percent of the claimed amount.Most of the complaints are against the violation of the initial contract agreements where private companies were found to have cheated the prospective workers."We cannot curb this without creating general awareness among those seeking overseas employment, as unlike manpower companies, it is hard to pin down individual agents and bring them to book. They do not have permanent offices and leave very little evidence to implicate them,” the DLEP official said.