Freelancing to reduce unemployment

Freelancing to reduce unemployment

Unemployment is rampant in the country. Thousands of educated and skilled youths with bachelor/postgraduate degrees are also unemployed while some are forced to work for minimum wages.

For this reason, the number of young people going abroad is also increasing day by day, while some young people are not able to move forward due to lack of capital and weak policies of the country.

In such a situation, a good platform for youth to get employment according to their skills is 'freelancing'.

What is Freelance?

Freelancing is the nature of work that is done independently with payment according to the work. A person who earns income by freelancing is called a freelancer.

Similarly, the means of working as an intermediary connecting the freelancer with the employing company and the company with the freelancer is called a 'freelancing platform'.

Graphic designing, website development, digital marketing, video/animation, data entry, legal consulting, professional consulting, surveys, etc. can be done through such a platform.

On such a platform, according to their skills, people put the details of the service they provide and the service fee they charge for it on the freelancing platform, and companies or individuals who need the service contact the freelancer.

In this way, the pricing is done on a mutual agreement and the freelancing platform deducts some percentage of the service fee and sends the remaining amount to the freelancer's account.

If the amount can be withdrawn from a platform immediately, it may take weeks or even months to withdraw from a platform.

Fiverr.com, Freelancer.com, upwork.com are some of the freelancing platforms used worldwide. A recently launched freelancing platform in Nepal is sakchha.com.

Freelance to reduce unemployment

Many young people are working as freelancers in the neighboring countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This trend is just starting in Nepal.

Young people, students, housewives or employed people who have completed their studies can also do freelancing work. Depending on the nature of work, freelancing work can be done from a laptop or mobile.

For this, the internet is a must. Similarly, you can do freelancing work from your home or anywhere. Due to this, freelancing does not require a large investment.

But due to the lack of information about this, many young people have been deprived of this type of work. On the other hand, even the informed youth are not enthusiastic about freelancing due to the unclear policy of the government, problems in the payment system, etc.

If the government can address the problems including the payment system, thousands of youth will get employment opportunities.

Freelancing to reduce the country's trade deficit

As the goods needed by the country cannot be produced by itself, it is necessary to import goods worth billions of rupees from foreign countries every day. Thus, the country's trade deficit is in trillions of rupees as imports are more than exports in the country.

Therefore, the accumulated foreign currency in the country is also decreasing day by day. To minimize this serious problem, now we can sell services to foreign customers and bring billions of foreign currency into the country.

We have the necessary skilled manpower in the field of IT, business, law etc. If the youth of this area can be inspired to freelancing and reach foreign customers, on the one hand jobs will be created in the country and on the other hand, foreign exchange will be brought in.

In this way the country's trade deficit can also be reduced to some extent.

Role of Government to promote Freelancing:

To inspire the youth towards freelancing, the government needs to make technology-friendly policies and rules. It is also necessary for the freelancer to facilitate the international payments to be made when advertising the services they provide to foreign clients.

Similarly, the freelancer should also create a comfortable environment to receive the payment of the income. Young people who want to do freelancing can be given loans or concessions to buy computers/laptops at minimum interest.

In government and private initiatives, by building a platform that can collaborate in different places, freelancers can be allowed to use it for a minimum rent and also a freelancing hub can be created.

Various training seminars can be conducted to enhance the capacity of the youth. If freelancers, the private sector and the government work together to formulate and implement policies and solve problems in this sector, Nepal can be known as a 'freelancing hub' in the world.