A new labour agreement proposed by the Malaysian government says employers will bear the cost of hiring Nepalis to work in Malaysia. The new recruitment modality comes nearly three months after Nepal barred its citizens from going to Malaysia citing their financial burden in the pre-departure phase.

“We recently received the first draft of the agreement which suggests hassle-free hiring of Nepali workers,” one official at the Labour, Employment and Social Security Ministry told the Post.

The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to go into the details of the draft, said Malaysia has proposed that no agencies or middlemen would be involved in processing visa for Nepali workers.

“Discussion is going on to ensure that Nepalis get job opportunities in Malaysia without paying any fees to any agencies or agents,” the official said.

Under the proposed “employer pays” mechanism, any company that seeks to employ Nepali workers will be required to bear the total cost of hiring. The Labour Ministry has started reviewing the provisions outlined in the document.

Officials said an agreement could be signed during the upcoming visit of Malaysian Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran to Nepal.

Malaysia seems to be keen to reach an agreement with Nepal soon in order to resume worker departures. Last week, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said his government would sign a memorandum of understanding with Nepal soon to resolve migrant workers’ issue.

Mahathir also said his country would adopt the Government-to-Government (G2G) model of hiring foreign workers, eliminating all middlemen and the danger of exploitation of such workers.