Balancing Cost,
Benefits of Migration
Sri Lanka Picks up a Tough, Touchy
Task
By
Feizal Samath
COLOMBO:
Despite growing concerns about the human cost of overseas migration,
Sri Lankan experts are cautious about tightening the procedures
for working abroad and say this has to be balanced with the risk
of undercutting the economic benefits of the labour exodus.
''On one hand, we need to protect our workers. On the other hand
we don't want to lose our share of overseas job markets in the
Middle East and Europe to competitors,'' said M. Seevaratnam,
a consultant at the state-run Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau
(SLFEB).
Seevaratnam's remarks sum up the dilemma faced by labour-exporting
countries like Sri Lanka, a nation that has one million workers
overseas, most of them women in the Middle East. He acknowledged
the need for the government to find ways of protecting Sri Lankan
workers from unscrupulous job agents here and abroad, rape and
physical abuse by employers and a host of other problems.
''We need to protect our workers but we also need to be cautious
in this process,'' S S Wijeratne, chairman of the Legal Aid Foundation
of Sri Lanka's Bar Association, said at a seminar Saturday on
legal aid for migrant workers.
''If labour-receiving countries feel we are placing restrictions
on foreign employers, they may go to other labour-supplying markets
that are less restrictive,'' said Wijeratne, who added that the
demand for foreign labour in Europe and the Middle East was rising.
Wijeratne said the foundation plans to station lawyers in the
Middle East to provide assistance to workers. Legal
experts like him hope that the U.N. convention on the rights of
migrant workers would be implemented this year after a 20th country,
the last needed for it to come into force, ratifies it.
''We are expecting Bangladesh to ratify it before the end of the
year. That I hope would provide added protection to our workers,''
said David Soysa, director of the Migrant Services Centre (MSC),
a non-governmental organisation.
According to a survey of returnee female domestic workers conducted
by the MSC last month, more than 20 percent of those interviewed
suffered injuries or physical abuse from employers. More than
50 percent who have returned were under medical treatment for
ailments like back pain, asthma, heart disease and other complications.
The
study, conducted in 400 households in three Sri Lankan districts
that provide the bulk of migrant workers, also found that 24 persons
were subject to sexual abuse while in employment. Two of them
became pregnant as a result.
''Many returnees also said that they have changed socially and
psychologically as a result of their foreign experience, that
their families and community failed to recognise it and it was
an additional push factor to re-migrate,'' it said.
In the sample survey, about 27 percent said their employment experience
had a negative impact on the family with problems like divorce
or separation, social and health problems, husbands being addicted
to alcohol, children dropping out from school and depression among
family members.
But the survey also found that annual incomes of migrant workers
went up to 25,000 rupees (nearly 250 U.S. dollars) a month for
80 percent of those interviewed. Many had previously been homemakers
who were not earning any money or were involved in small jobs.
Sri Lanka's migrant workers are the country's highest net foreign
exchange earner, making some one billion dollars annually. Such
is the power of the industry that the government had to hastily
withdraw a proposed 15 percent tax on remittances by migrant workers
that it proposed in the budget on Nov. 5.
Public fury over the proposal was spread across the newspapers,
television and radio stations, forcing Finance Minister K N Choksy
to concede that there had been some misunderstanding and that
all references to a tax on remittances were being withdrawn.
Meantime, Seevaratnam said the government was considering amendments
to the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau Act, which governs
all migrant workers, and would invite suggestions from the public
to update it.
''There is a desperate need to update the Act and bring in line
with modern trends. It was enacted in 1985 at a time when there
were not many women going abroad,'' he said.
Priyadarshini Karunaratne, deputy director of the consular affairs
division of Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry, said new laws were also
being drafted for submission to parliament shortly.
These would enable women to register children conceived abroad
and apply for Sri Lankan citizenship from the country's embassies
abroad, a right that only males have right now. Right now, migrant
women workers who have had children out of wedlock or after being
raped are not be able to get citizenship for their children, who
end up stateless.
Karunaratne said 273 Sri Lankan migrant workers in the Middle
East have died so far this year. Most died from heart failure
due to heavy workloads in the homes where they work.
She said the SLFEB also had a safehouse for pregnant women who
return home and give birth under the care of the state, without
informing their families and husbands who often reject them. ''After
the child is born, they either go home or opt for the child to
be adopted,'' she said.
But Padmini Samarasinghe, a counsellor, says the social cost of
migration is so that it is time to ban the export of women labour.
''There are serious problems after women leave their children
and go abroad. Yes it is nice to talk of the government earning
foreign exchange but what about the children who are left behind
to fend for themselves?'' she asked.
Samarasinghe, a group director at one of Sri Lanka's top companies,
said her organisation has tried to convince women at a village
outside Colombo, who want to go abroad, to do so only when their
children are grown up.
