Overview

Manual labourers in Bhutan are mostly used in the construction sector such as for building roads and other Government and private infrastructure. Because of its small population and considering that it is an agrarian country which demands lot of manual work, there is an acute shortage of manual labourers in the country and most of the manual works are carried out by foreign workers pre-dominantly from India. Major infrastructure development projects have been implemented in the past two decades and as a result of the accelerating rate of development activities throughout the kingdom and the emergence of large projects such as Tala,  Kurichu, Punatsangchu and Mangdechu  Hydro Electric Projects the demand of foreign workers, both skilled and un-skilled increased substantially. In the year 2000, the Government approved the increase of ceiling of foreign workers within the country at any given time from 30,000 to 45,000 to meet the requirements of the three hydro projects. This is likely to be changed by the government from time to time depending on the economic activities, national security and supply of Bhutanese workforce who need to be provided with gainful employment.

There are no labour unions in Bhutan and Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (MoLHR) is the sole custodian of labour laws and regulations in the country.