Nepal is a young country with about
70% (i.e. 15.91 million) of the total population below the age of 35 years. Approximately
38.8% of total population is marked by the age between 16-40 years. It is for
that reason our country Nepal stands as one with lowest median age of 22 years.
In spite of its youthful population, Nepal has not been able to mark rapid
economic development in absence of stable political situation and policies to
govern the youth employability issues.
It is estimated that every year
500,000 jobs needs to be created to provide full employment to the youth force
that enter the labor market. However it is no surprise that only a fraction of
those youths get job in local market while most of them are bound to leave
country for employment opportunities. Figures estimate that approximately 350,000
to 400,000 youths leave the country each year as a migrant worker. It is a
matter of fact that around 1500 youths leave country each day in search of
better future abroad, most of them being as migrant worker. Rests are either educated youths who land to
developed countries in search of better future or youths who stay in country; unemployed
and mostly uneducated.
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While the population of youth is
very large in Nepal, the status of youth in workforce is somehow poor. Most of
the youths who leave country as migrant worker are unskilled. This not only
leads to ill-treatment of the workers abroad, but also results to low per
capita remittance flow to the country. In
spite of this, remittance from abroad contributes more than 25% of GDP, which
is nearly double the country’s revenue from export of goods and services.
However the pity being that remittance has not been channelized towards
investments in wealth creating projects. Beside migrant workers, the migrating
trend of educated youths is in the rise. This sometimes leads to dearth of
qualified workers in national projects of long term strategic importance. The
disappointment also being that the sectors which have maximum involvement of
youths are also not effectively managed. For example, agriculture sector which
employs about 74% of total labor force has contribution to GDP of less than
35%. As such the nation has not been
able to capitalize most out of its youthful population.
With around 70% of total workforce integrating
into international labor market every year; it is evident that this trend will
increase even further. The median age of
Nepal is 22 years and with population growth rate of 2%, it will decline
further. While proportion of labor force is decreasing significantly in western
world, that of Nepal is increasing. As such Nepal has comparative advantage in
the global context, with regard to the labor force. As a least developed
country (LDC) aiming to graduate from LDC by 2022, Nepal is still to use its
resources for rapid development, including the human resources. Success to
develop quality manpower will not only contribute more for national building
but also increase remittance from abroad.
As such, the need of time is to
address the youth employability issues via proper policy. A recent improvement
in this direction has been the introduction of Employment Policy 2015. The
policy aims to provide training to youths in sector of strategic importance
like agriculture, hydro-power, tourism, manufacturing etc. It also aims to
promote entrepreneurship spirit by providing seed money to aspiring youths
while also linking them to domestic markets. Thus the policy does not only
envisage creating employment opportunities in local market but also aims to
improve the status of migrant workers by providing them necessary training.
However, government should consider a proper implementation of this policy
unlike the erstwhile Youth self-Employment program of providing Rs.200,000 per
youths as seed money where the fund was found to be misused by most of the
party aides. Failure to do so would have serious ramifications in long term
where Nepal might enter into phase of economic colonization as suppliers of
clerks to the whole world.
