What is the salary of Optometrist in Nepal?

 This article answers these two questions:

How much an optometrist earns in Nepal?

What is the salary of Optometrist in Nepal?

The average salary of optometrist in Nepal is around NPR 45K in an institution-bound job. But, we can't finish the answer of this question so tersely because the salary of an optometrist depends upon many factors. That being said, an optometrist can earn as much as NPR 200K and as low as 15K monthly in the current Nepali market trends. On the other hand many remain unemployed as well. We will go on details about this in the following paragraphs.

·       Working Hours (longer hours pay more): The average time of work for an optometrist in an institutionalized hospital is 9-4 or 9-5. That means 7-8 hours a day with one day off. The payment should not be lower than NPR 35K in this working format where s/he are responsible for refraction, BSV evaluation, low vision and contact lens practice and investigative procedures. If the working hours increases the payment should also increase by NPR 5-6K per hour. Whereas, optometrists working same number of hours in a private clinic or optical may have a salary as low as NPR 30K.  

·       Working region (there is certain regional variation as well in the payment of salary of optometrists for example an optometrist working in Terai with the same level of academics and same years of experience may have higher salary than the one working in hilly region. For an instance, the first month's salary of an optometrist working in eye hospitals operated by NGOs and are located near Indian borders is NPR 40K. Private hospital in the same situation, on the other hand, pays NPR 35K.

·       Working Institution (some NGO-based hospital has a same range of salary to optometrist, some are more liberal in payment while most of the privately owned eye hospital employs optometrist. For the purpose of illustration  Nepal Netra Jyoti Sangh pays NPR 42-45K per month as a salary to novice optometrists.

·       Experience: The payment also depends upon the experience of the working optometrist. For example, the freshly graduate optometrist, in many situations, might have to work gratis for a few months. They can have a certificate of volunteering which can be applicable for further jobs. The private clinic and optical might have a miserable payment for the fresh optometrists because as low as NPR 15 payment per month for working 6 hours a day has been reported in Kathmandu. In private eye hospital novice optometrist's monthly salary starts at NPR 30K and in NGO-based eye hospital the salary starts at NPR 40K. According to the experience and added responsibilities the salary of an optometrist working for over a decade goes up to NPR 70-90K per month depending upon the organizational financial capacity.

·       Nature of work and responsibilities: If the work scope of an optometrist is not only limited to clinical duties but also extends to teaching such as that in an academic institution, the salary is around and above NPR 60K including the allowances from teaching. If the working area is in the foreign funded project, then the salary is above NPR 90K. Generally, per hour of lecture would pay as low as NPR 1K for bachelor's and NPR 500 for diploma level if the teacher has master of optometry degree.

·       Academic degree: Bachelor of optometry may earn in the range of NPR 40-60K for below 10 years of experience and starting monthly earning for Master of optometry is NPR 60K.

·       Added responsibilities: in an organizational job, optometrist with a certain level of experience and expertise have added responsibilities like in-charge of outreach, OPD, research, etc. In such situations, they have added amount in the salary.

·       Private owner: Optometrist can also own his/her own private clinic or optical the monthly income (expenditure deducted) of which is also a subject of fluctuation depending on the place of clinic. Bluntly said, the income of an optometrist who owns his own clinic/optical ranges from as low as NPR 20K to as high as NPR 200K as per the experience, networks, place, investment and scope of practice.

• Share Holder: If an optometrist holds a certain percentage of shares in a group for opening an private eye hospital or the network, then s/he can have advantage of profit sharing as per the investment ration on top of monthly salary. There are these kind of scenario in Nepal as well.  

 

Above situations are described if an optometrist work at one place i.e. the working hours is 7-8 hours a day with a day off in a week and working in an hospital or clinic. However, they can also work part-time in clinics and optical outlets in the morning and evening time and on the holidays beside their regular duties in a fixed place. Mostly the preferred part-time hours for optometrist in Nepal are 4-7PM in the evening and in such cases the payment is usually NPR 10K per hour for a month.

The range of salary in this article is in the current market trends as of January 2023; please keep in mind to update 10% increment every two-year from this date to relate the average salary of optometrist in the time of reading this article.

On the bitter side, there are around 20% of graduated optometrists who actually are devoid of any employment: they are not being able to be engaged even in private eye clinics and optical outlets. This is obviously due to the saturation of the human resource. The WHO mandated number of optometrists has already been reached as there are already above 1200 NHPC registered optometrists in Nepal. Please note that WHO mandated one optometrist per 50k population which means 600 optometrists are enough to serve the 30 millions population of Nepal provided they are distributed proportionally across the nation. Therefore, it can be easily picturized that the number of optometrists is already double than necessary in their conventional mode of clinical practice.

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