Frequent changes in leadership and staff crunch at Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) have affected the monitoring of recruiting agencies for foreign employment. 

The DoFE has been unable to monitor the activities of foreign employment recruitment agencies for more than two months now. 

According to DoFE Director Mohan Adhikari, regular monitoring of manpower recruitment agencies has been halted due to repeated changes in the department’s leadership. 

“We have been unable to conduct regular monitoring of manpower agencies. One of the major reasons behind this is frequent changes in the leadership,” said Adhikari. 

Since mid-November, the DoFE has seen three officials as its director general. It 

started with the arrest of the then DG Bishow Raj Pandey, who was caught red-handed by the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) while taking bribe from a black-listed recruiting agency. 

The DoFE had a leadership vacuum for a month following Pandey’s ouster, which affected the general operations of the department and the monitoring of manpower recruitment agencies, said Adhikari. 

Pandey was replaced by Rajkumar Shrestha, but he hardly spent two months in the job before he was succeeded by Bhuwan Prasad Acharya. 

“The department’s works have been severely affected in the last two months,” said Adhikari. 

With the DoFE failing to monitor the activities of foreign job recruitment agencies, migrant workers are at risk of getting deceived by unscrupulous agents. 

Earlier, the DoFE officials used to carry out inspection of at least 10 recruiting agencies a day. There has been no inspection rounds in two months.

Besides frequent leadership changes, Adhikari said, inadequate human resources has also affected the monitoring of foreign employment recruitment agencies.

The Monitoring and Orientation Section under the DoFE should have four section officers and four non-gazetted officers. Currently, the section is being run by only two officers. The Investigation and Complaint Section also has limited human resources at the moment. 

“Our job has been limited to rescuing of migrants working abroad and dealing with the cases where migrant workers have been cheated,” said director Adhikari.   

The DoFE has requested its line ministry to fill the vacancies, so that it can perform all of its duties at a smooth and optimum level.