MUSCAT: Oman and Nepal have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enable Omani employers to cover the recruitment costs of Nepali employment in Oman and also get free legal support, a Nepali English daily reported. 

“In this draft, we have been able to establish that employers recruiting workers will be liable to cover all their costs,” Ram Prasad Ghimire, joint secretary at the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security, has said. 

“We have tried to make the government of Oman responsible to protect the rights of workers and ensure their benefits and facilities. We have not made any compromise in relation to workers’ rights,” he added. 

A two-day meeting between senior officials of the two countries that concluded in Kathmandu on Friday gave the final touch to the MoU text.

Officials say that the MoU will be signed for the first time between the two countries for sending and receiving Nepali workers. 

Apart from a provision that will require employers in Oman to bear all the costs of Nepali workers including visa fees and airfare, the MoU will also cover workplace safety, insurance and measures to prevent labor exploitation. 

Oman is one of the top ten destinations for Nepali workers. 

According to the data of Department of Foreign Employment, 3,059 Nepali citizens have acquired work permit to go for employment in Oman in the last Fiscal Year 2017/18. 

The data shows that the department had issued 358,815 work permits for outbound Nepali workers in that fiscal year. 

Nepal has so far signed labor agreements with seven countries out of nearly 142 countries where Nepali citizens went for employment in the last Fiscal Year 2017/18. 

Though Oman was reportedly pitching a template of labor pact similar to that it had signed with other labor sending countries, Nepal’s insistence to negotiate on its own draft had delayed the process, according to a member of the Nepali delegation.