Number of Sri Lankan housemaids in Gulf up

Number of  Sri Lankan housemaids in Gulf up
It is estimated that there are 1.5 million Sri Lankans currently working in the Middle East. (File/Reuters)
Updated 13 January 2019

Number of Sri Lankan housemaids in Gulf up

Number of  Sri Lankan housemaids in Gulf up
  • It is estimated that there are 1.5 million Sri Lankans currently working in the Middle East

COLOMBO: The number of workers leaving Sri Lanka to take up jobs as housemaids in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and the Far East has soared by more than 16 percent in the past year.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar were the main destinations in the Middle East for domestic employees coming from the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, with Japan and South Korea most popular in the Far East.
Figures for the areas highlighted show that a total of 64,965 people left Sri Lanka to work as housemaids in 2018, an increase from 55,884 the year before.
Madhava Deshapriya, deputy general manager for corporate communications at the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, told Arab News on Friday that the upward trend is being put down to recruitment agencies making salary payments of up to SR6,000 ($1,600) to housemaids in advance of them leaving Sri Lanka for their new jobs abroad.
One Sri Lankan recruitment agent, Abdul Rahman, said new laws restricting working hours for women had encouraged maids to seek out better-paid jobs in other countries. It is estimated that there are 1.5 million Sri Lankans currently working in the Middle East.


’Foreign maneuvers’ in West Sahara destablizing Algeria: PM

Updated 42 min 47 sec ago

’Foreign maneuvers’ in West Sahara destablizing Algeria: PM

’Foreign maneuvers’ in West Sahara destablizing Algeria: PM
  • The Polisario had already announced last month that it regarded a 1991 cease-fire as over
  • Algeria, Morocco’s neighbor and regional rival, is the key foreign backer of the Polisario Front

ALGIERS: Algeria’s prime minister on Saturday criticized “foreign maneuvers” he said were aimed to destabilize it, after Washington recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for Rabat normalizing ties with Israel.
“There are foreign maneuvers which aim to destabilize Algeria,” Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad said, in Algeria’s first reaction to the US decision.
“There is now a desire by the Zionist entity to come closer to our borders,” he added, in reference to Israel.
Algeria, Morocco’s neighbor and regional rival, is the key foreign backer of the Polisario Front, which has campaigned for independence for the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara since the 1970s.
“We are seeing today at our borders... wars and instability around Algeria,” Djerad said, in a speech to mark the anniversary of demonstrations against French colonial rule.
The surprise announcement by outgoing President Donald Trump on Thursday of US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara was swiftly dismissed by the Polisario, who have vowed to fight on until Moroccan forces withdraw.
The Polisario had already announced last month that it regarded a 1991 cease-fire as over, after Morocco sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone to reopen the road to neighboring Mauritania, Morocco’s sole land link to sub-Saharan Africa.
The Polisario has since claimed that repeated exchanges of fire have taken place along the 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) sand barrier that separates the two sides.
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which Polisario leaders proclaimed in 1976, is a member of the African Union, but controls just 20 percent of the territory, mostly empty desert.
The territory’s main sources of revenue — its phosphate deposits and rich Atlantic fisheries — are all in Moroccan hands.
As a result, the Polisario is heavily dependent on support from Algeria, where it operates rear-bases and runs camps for tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees.
For the Polisario, Algeria’s support would be essential for any return to major fighting.