Sri Lanka pledges to send skilled workers rather than servants

Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Minister Dilan Perera, who conducted a road show in Dammam, told Arab News that it has been a challenge ensuring the rights and safety of lower skilled workers who work abroad.
“The maidservants who come out for foreign employment face problems, such as (physical) harassment, delayed wages, breach of contract, in the host countries while  their families back home face serious socio-economic problems,” the minister said, adding that the government is unofficially discouraging its citizens from taking up maid jobs abroad.
“We want to offer more skilled and quality manpower to the Kingdom and other regional  job markets,” he stressed. “We have well established training centers to update the prospective foreign workers with the required skills. An innovative mechanism is currently being developed in Sri Lanka to implement job-specific, country-specific and company-specific training programs for the citizens, who seek foreign opportunities. We are implementing resolving the problems of our migrant manpower and improve their welfare system, by introducing education scholarship to the children of Gulf returnees. Work-related complaints such as employee or agent harassment, physical abuse, health challenges and issues of absconding maids have significantly come down at the Lankan missions in the Kingdom.”
As a welfare measure for Lankan foreign workers, he said his government is considering to allocate a sizable quota for their students to enroll in the new private university which is coming up soon in Colombo.
“By this program, we will be able to attract foreign remittances from our nationals and thus helping our community too.”
Perera, who visited deportation centers in the Eastern Province said that repatriation process is being done methodically with the support of the Lankan mission in the Kingdom.