Nepal and Saudi Arabia Reach Deal on Workers

Nepal and Saudi Arabia have made important agreements about Nepali workers. This happened today during a meeting in Geneva between Nepal’s Minister of Labor, Employment, and Social Security, Sharat Singh Bhandari, and Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Minister for International Affairs, Tariq Al Hamad.

Minister Bhandari’s private office announced that during their talks, the two countries agreed on key points regarding sending workers to Saudi Arabia.

Minister Bhandari stated that Saudi Arabia is now ready to sign two agreements right away. These agreements will focus on taking general workers and skilled workers, along with a program to check their skills. The agreement for general workers has already been approved by Nepal.

“We had already agreed on the labor agreement for general workers. Only the signing remains,” said Minister Bhandari. “Previously, Saudi Arabia insisted that the general workers’ agreement could only be signed after an agreement on domestic workers was reached. However, this recent meeting decided to move forward with the already agreed-upon general workers’ agreement and to do more work on the draft agreement for domestic workers.”

Minister Bhandari also informed the Saudi officials that a Nepali parliamentary committee has instructed that any agreement on domestic workers should only happen after a general labor agreement between the two countries is in place. He also suggested that a trial project might be needed for this.