A senior Sri Lankan government official told Arab News on Tuesday that his country has no intention of ending the practice of sending housemaids abroad.

“We have not taken any policy decision on such a ban,” said Mangala Randeniya, deputy general manager of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), from Colombo. He was refuting rumors that the island is considering imposing a ban on the deployment of housemaids abroad.

“We do approve of women going overseas to work as domestic helpers and we cannot put a complete end to this phenomenon in the immediate future. We have therefore launched several programs to upgrade their skills and get them better salaries,” he said.

“Our intention is to regularize the recruitment of housemaids in the Kingdom,” he said.

He said that the government has stipulated that domestic workers not be below the age of 25 and not have children below the age of five.

Randeniya pointed out that other conditions include specifying a minimum wage, working hours and the type of training to be given back home.

Randeniya, who is also the spokesman of the SLBFE, said the Kingdom’s Sri Lankan worker population is made up mostly of housemaids. Some 400,000 Lankan workers are employed in the Kingdom, which constitutes the largest population of Sri Lankans in the Middle East.

The SLBFE is the statutory body that coordinates with countries for the overseas employment of its workers.