Govt eases visa process, takes renewal requests

The government has adopted an integrated visa issuance procedure, aiming to enable foreigners working in multinational and joint venture companies to enter Nepal with relative ease, and has also started renewal and approval of visas for them.
It had stopped processing visa requests since about two months ago, admitting that the existing procedures were not clear and posing difficulties for applicants seeking renewal of work visas.
“On Friday, we introduced the integrated checklist of documents that companies need to submit and the procedures they need to follow for getting visas for foreigners working in Nepal,” Bishnu Dhakal, under secretary at the Ministry of Industry (MoI), told Republica.
With the introduction of new arrangements, he said, the Department of Industry (DoI) has resumed processing their issue and renewal applications as well.
Under the new arrangements, any company hiring foreigners need to submit more than a dozen documents at DoI, including application letter, certificate of industry registration, certificate of PAN registration, original copy of vacancy notice published in a broadsheet Nepali daily to confirm that there is no candidate available in Nepal for the particular work, and details of facilities that the company provides to the foreign employee, among others.
The new arrangement says that companies can employee foreigners in two ways only. One is under technology transfer agreements and the other is by advertising the vacant post. To get a visa under the latter arrangement, the company needs to prove that there is no local manpower suitable for the post.
"The new process will help us identify genuine requirement for foreign workers in a company," said Dhakal, adding that the government will now be processing visa applications under the newly introduced procedures.
The government had decided to introduce an integrated system to issue new visas and renew work permits to foreign workers in order to cater to their needs through a single window.
“Previously, companies were required to go to different offices to get clearance and acquire work permits for their foreign staff. The new integrated system has ended that practice, easing matters for them,” Dhakal said.
According to a DoI official, the stalling of visa processing had hampered more than half a dozen multinational and joint venture companies, such as NCell and Unilever Nepal, in getting due renewal of work permits for their foreign staff over the last two months.
“We will now process their applications with top priority,” he stated