Less than 3 per cent of aspiring migrant workers receive skill training: Report

Kathmandu, Aug. 1

Skill training for aspiring migrant workers has not been a priority for the government and other stakeholders.

According to statistics published by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) and the Foreign Employment Board (FEB), only a small portion of youth willing to go for foreign employment have been provided with skill development training.

The FEB informed on Thursday that from the Foreign Employment Welfare Fund, 14,458 youth planning to fly overseas as migrant workers were trained on skill development and entrepreneurship in the last Fiscal Year 2024/25. This number is 96.38 per cent of the annual target of the Board.

But in terms of the total labour permits issued by the DoFE, this training has reached only about 2.9 per cent of the aspiring migrant workers.

A total of 493,312 youth obtained new 'labour permit' – 133,634 individual and 359,678 agency – to work abroad in the last fiscal year. Likewise, 333,305 obtained a re-entry permit from the DoFE. Including 12,653 individuals obtaining the permit to work in South Korea, Israel and the United Kingdom under the Government-to-Government programme, 839,270 individuals obtained the labour permit.

Against this massive number, skill training reached only a small fraction.

Numbers are not encouraging in terms of upskilling the returnee migrant workers as well. Only 4,561 such returnees have been trained.

The FEB had targeted to train and upskill only 15,000 and 5,000 with willing to go for foreign employment and returnees, respectively.

At the press conference, the Board informed that it had set the target according to the available resources. For the current year, it has received the allocation of only Rs. 315 million for study and skill development training.

According to the DoFE statistics, 61 per cent of the Nepali workers going for jobs abroad in FY 2024/25 were classified as skilled, while 72 per cent (of 741,297 workers) who went abroad in 2023/24 were skilled.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 2 August 2025.