RIYADH: The Sri Lankan government has urged its overseas workers to register with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) before they leave abroad for employment.

Foreign Employment Minister Thalatha Athukorale told the overseas workers that the government will not accept any responsibility for those who leave for foreign employment without prior registration at the SLBFE from this year.

“President Maithripala Sirisena’s manifesto incorporates a program for protecting migrant workers and their families which is known as Shramika Surakuma,” he said.

Accordingly, all migrant workers should be registered with their nearest Divisional Secretariat to get any benefits from this scheme. “However, only 96,000 migrant workers out of 1.7 million have registered with the government authorities so far,” the minister said.

Athukorale was speaking at a ceremony organized by the SLBFE to grant scholarships to migrant workers’ children in the districts of Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura on Thursday.

Certain opportunist politicians have spread rumors that the government was planing to levy a tax of 65,000 Sri Lankan rupees on each migrant worker after the registration. This is completely false, she said.

The minister said it is unfortunate that only 544 children from migrant families are obtaining these scholarships although there are 200,000 migrant families with migrant workers in these four districts.

Recently, the registration fee of Sri Lankan workers bound for foreign employment was reduced to Rs 5,000 (SR170) instead of the Rs 7,700 (SR 226) paid to the SLBFE.

The new service fee of SR5,000 levied by the SLBFE came into effect from May 1 last year. It is a statutory requirement in the island that all foreign workers should register themselves with the SLBFE, which in turn would look after the workers interests in the Kingdom, such as repatriation of bodies of workers, looking after the family of women who work abroad and assisting workers in case of a dispute with their respective sponsors.

The minister said action will be taken to prevent women who have young children from taking up foreign employment. The rights of children and women should be protected for the progress of the country, she said.

In Sri Lanka, children of women who go abroad are becoming a social problem. Their education is neglected and there is no one at home to look after them in the absence of their mothers.

Usually, renewals of the SLBFE registration could be done either in Sri Lanka or in the host country’s Lankan mission. Renewal of registration could be done at the island’s missions in Jeddah and Riyadh on a payment of SR110.

There are around 1.5 million Lankan workers in the Middle East, majority of whom are housemaids. Last year, the island’s overseas worker population had remitted $6 billion.