Asean to help nurses, techies get jobs abroad

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Nurses, techies, teachers and other professionals can have reasons to cheer with the efforts on to include services in the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with member states of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

This was stated by the joint secretary in the department of commerce, Asit Tripathy, who was here in connection with an outreach session on FTA to elicit the views of stakeholders organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, on Wednesday.

For instance, once the agreement became effective, professionals would not have to deposit any social security fund while engaging in any services in any of these countries.

“The agreement would also ensure that there would be no discrimination and the professionals would be treated on par with their counterparts in those countries. The government hopes to sign the agreement year-end, or a while later, Tripathy added.

Similar outreach sessions would be held across the country to elicit the views of the stakeholders before signing the agreement. The present FTA included only trade in goods.

The FTA would not give any market access to the agriculture sector and there would be no tariff concessions.

Agreements have already been reached with Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore for this, and it would take some time before the benefits are derived, said Sonia Pant, deputy secretary in the trade policy department of the ministry.

Since there were a large number of professionals here, such agreements would prove beneficial to the country, she further said.