Kusum, who is in her 30s , came to Bhutan as a child. This mother of four children is worried of the government notification that illegal sweepers will have to leave the country
The popular notion that Bhutanese will not take up certain blue collar jobs may not be fully true with the employment department saying it has already received 30 applications for sweeping jobs.
The announcement for job vacancies was given after more than 100 illegal wet sweepers were asked to leave the country, the employment director Jamyang Gaylay said.
“A sweeper also gets paid about Nu 5,000, which is good compared to the pay a VTI graduate who works in an automobile workshop gets,” he said adding that it was mostly uneducated women who were willing to take up the job.
Since June, 2004, certain job sectors have been closed for non-Bhutanese. (See the box for jobs allocated for Bhutanese).
Although Bhutanese have been taking up jobs like accountant, typist, tailor, receptionist etc, only 35 people have been recruited by private agencies in the past three years (2007 to September 2009) in occupations like hair dresser, sweeper, washer and gardener.
According to statistics with the labor ministry, the number of Bhutanese employed as hair dressers, sweepers, washers and gardeners are 21, five, four and five respectively.
But there has not been an upward trend in people taking up jobs.
For example, in 2007, there were five hair dressers. It doubled to 10 in 2008. But only six took up the job till September this year.
However, there has been an increase in the total number of Bhutanese employed in the past three years. Despite the increase, Bhutan still does not have a single Bhutanese employed as a cobbler, barber or messenger in the private sector.
But if Bhutanese are not willing to come up in the above occupations, expatriates, that means mainly from the northern Indian states will be able to come in.
“If we don’t get Bhutanese employees, then we will tell the labor deparment to issue permits to non-nationals for those jobs,” said Jamyang Gaylay.
Since Bhutanese with sufficient qualification and skills are now available, the following occupations are closed to foreign workers since June 1, 2004
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