Lanka to adopt new strategy to market labor potentials

Sri Lanka will introduce new practices in the Kingdom to market its labor potentials in a professional manner, the island's ambassador to the Kingdom said yesterday.
Ambassador Ahmed A. Jawad was speaking to Arab News following his arrival from Amman, where he had attended the recent regional consultative meeting of the heads of Sri Lanka diplomatic missions and officers attached to the labor sections of the missions in the labor receiving countries.
The assembly was also attended by Sri Lanka External Affairs Secretary K. Amunugama, Secretary to the Ministry of Labor and Labor Relations Upali Wijeweera, and experts from the International Labor Organization.
The heads of Sri Lankan diplomatic missions and officials of the labor sections of the missions in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, Cyprus, Singapore, Maldives and Malaysia were present at the meeting.
This meeting was organized jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare and the Ministry of External Affairs in cooperation with the International Labor Organization and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
“The decision to develop the new market strategy in the Middle East was taken at the regional meeting convened under the guidance of Dilan Perera, minister of foreign employment promotion and welfare,” Jawad said.
“Hitherto, we have been exporting our manpower to the Kingdom, and now we want to market our semiskilled and skilled human resources,” he added.
“Our labor section has been facilitating the process of labor recruitment and looking after labor welfare work for the migrant workers,” the diplomat said, explaining that now the mission's professional marketing team would visit establishments in the Kingdom to market the country's labor potentials.
With due respects to the Kingdom's Saudization program, he said the mission would try to fill the vacuum where the foreign manpower is needed. “We have young, educated, skilled and semiskilled workers who are capable of adapting themselves to any environment and situation,” he said.
According to the ambassador, the plans for the implementation of the new marketing program would be worked out in Colombo, and the mission would launch it as it gets the green light from Colombo with the needed support staff to carry out this project.
He said there was no plan to stop the dispatch of housemaids to the Kingdom. “We are only trying to send more workers to Saudi Arabia and to other countries in the region,” Jawad stressed, adding that the country would be willing to give them additional training in some areas if required.
Regarding housemaids, he said their problems were minimal compared to the size of the island's maid population in the Kingdom.
The regional meeting was also aimed at enhancing avenues of welfare and protection of Sri Lankan migrant workers employed in the region, a workforce that is estimated to be more than 1.5 million out of its 1.9 million overseas workers.
The meeting was also aimed at identifying and remedying gaps and deficiencies in the effective and efficient delivery of services by Sri Lanka diplomatic missions in labor receiving countries in addressing migrant worker grievances, the envoy noted.
The Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh receives an average of 10 runaway housemaids a day, while its consulate in Jeddah receives three maidservants daily.
Sri Lankan Consul General in Jeddah Athambawa Uthumalebbe, who also attended the meeting, said the island's migrant workers contributed a great deal to the development of the country through their foreign exchange earnings from foreign employment.
In 2010, he said, they had remitted around Rs. 4.65 billion, and it had become the No. 1 foreign exchange earner in the country.
In recognition of their services to the national economy, he said, President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared Dec. 18 as the International Migrant’s Day, which was celebrated in Sri Lanka in a grand manner last year.