Prime Minister (PM) KP Sharma Oli has said Falgun 1, the first day of the 11th month of Nepali calendar, will henceforth be celebrated as Employment Day.
Launching the Prime Minister Employment Program in Kathmandu on Wednesday, PM Oli said the day will be celebrated every year as it is a historic day that will take Nepal a step forward.
The Maoists, who have now unified with Oli-led CPN-UML to form the ruling CPN, had also launched the 'People's War' on Falgun 1 23 years back and celebrate the day as People's War Day.
The program brought by the Ministry for Labor, Employment and Social Security will make efforts to provide at least 100 days of employment for unemployed citizens every year. The unemployed persons will have to go to the local ward office in all 753 local bodies and fill a form to be eligible for the program.
The ward offices will collect those forms and send them to the employment service center in the respective municipalities and rural municipalities. The local bodies are currently recruiting employment coordinators.
The local bodies will determine whether the persons are employed or not on the basis of the details provided by the service centers. The list of the persons deemed to be unemployed will then be entered in the employment management information system at the local level.
All the projects will have to apply with the employment service center to seek workers. The service center will send the listed unemployed persons to work. The projects will have to deposit the wages of the workers in their respective bank accounts.
The government will provide some money for the unemployed persons as subsistence allowance if it cannot provide 100 days of work for them in this manner. The amount will be half of the minimum wages for 100 days. The current minimum wage set by the government is Rs 13,450 per month or just over Rs 448 per day. The government will provide Rs 22,416 to the persons who don't get even 100 days of work in a year.
The allowance, however, will not be given if any member of the family is self-employed or has worked for at least 100 days. It will also not be given if the family earns an annual income set by the government. The government has yet to set the benchmark annual income.
The allowance will also not be provided to family members of pensioners or recipients of any kind of social security allowances.
