Considering the growing role of media in public perception building as well as influencing the policymaking process in country, CSC adopted media monitoring as one of the effective instruments to evaluate the progress as well as understand initiatives taken by the government, non-government as well as private sectors in addressing the problems associated with foreign labor migration through policy as well as programmatic interventions. Media monitoring task was further focused on to identify the volume, trends and patterns of foreign labor migration as reported by Nepali media and eventually understand the dynamics and direction of foreign labor migration in Nepal.
Another important aspect of media monitoring is to assess which foreign labor migration related theme(s) are significantly covered by media and which are not. CSC through its internal assessment has identified thirteen highly pertinent themes related to foreign labor migration to assess the effectiveness of migration policies and governance in Nepal. These thirteen categories include, a) Government services to migrant workers and members of their families, b) Function and efficiencies of government agencies, c) Migration policies, programs, treaties, and institutions, d) Recruitment agencies, e) Women and foreign labor migration, f) Migration and human trafficking, g) Problems faced by migrant workers, h) Death of migrant workers, i) Reintegration challenges of returnee migrant workers, j) Success stories of current as well as returnee migrant workers, k) Remittance, l) Cost of labor migration and m) others.
As an outcome of 24 months media monitoring work, CSC has published a media monitoring report named Annual Media Monitoring Report on Foreign Labor Migration and launched in August 2018. Second report is expected to publish in March 2019.