DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Turning Opportunity Into Livelihoods

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Dec 6 1997 (IPS) - Making plastic out of waste is the business of a small factory on the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital. That by itself is nothing remarkable.

But ‘Seth Sevana’ is staffed entirely by disabled young people who are both poor and spastic or blind, deaf and dumb. Here they are able to work in dignity, and earn a regular wage to support their families.

The salaries are decided according to their skill and experience, and strictly adhere to Sri Lanka’s tough labour laws on employment. Workers are expected to do everything, including their own cooking at the hostel in the factory compound where some of those whose families do not stay nearby, live.

The factory manufactures a variety of useful things like steel- framed folding chairs, plastic brushes, plate racks and wheelbarrows, from waste polythene collected by dozens of poor women, children and men who scour garbage dumps across Colombo.

It is the determination of one person that has made ‘Seth Sevana’, which in Sinhala means ‘house of benefits’, a success.

Hernon Ferdinands set up the factory, whih is also a training centre for the disabled, in Moratuwa, a Colombo suburb in 1984, when he was a “much younger man”, he laughingly says.

The idea grew out of a short stint as a staff member in a school for deaf and blind children at a nearby town, which he joined at 19 to support his parents and five siblings, when his father fell ill and had to stop working.

At the end of the two years, he had discovered his life’s ambition. “Meeting other teachers of the mentally impaired and visually handicapped helped me to seriously think about the future,” he said.

In 13 years, ‘Seth Sevana’ has grown to sustain more than 100 families. Thirty three-year-old D. Jayasundera, 33, moulds steel into frames. Both he and his wife are deaf, but much to their constant delight, their two-year-old son is “normal”.

K. Dharamadasa walked into the factory a few years ago in search of a job. He is both deaf and blind, and was at his wit’s end about how to earn a living when he heard about ‘Seth Sevana’. He has been here ever since.

The disabled too are talented and have various skills, says Ferdinands. “The only difference is that these talents are hidden due to their condition,” he adds.

When he started, Ferdinands employed one disabled person. Now the vocational training and workshop that is part of the factory, has 30 disabled people on its rolls. A similar number have been found jobs elsewhere after being trained at the centre, which Ferdinands hopes to expand, funds permitting.

Impressed with its work, ‘Seth Sevana’ has received some financial help from the Netherlands, non-governmental organisations and the Sri Lankan government, which has given it a tax-free status.

Several awards have also come his way, but Ferdinands says it is never enough. The buildings are dilapidated and in need of repair, he asserts. Most floors are not cemented and during the heavy downpours of the monsoon season get flooded.

“Two years ago, we had terrible flooding,” he explains. “We need a new building, equipped with modern machines but money is the stumbling block.”

In addition, there is also a great need for staff retraining, he points out. “I wish I could get some special training from abroad to help us turn out quality plastic goods working with the disabled,” says Ferdinands.

His deputy, Jayantha Fernando, a former seaman who quit his job to give his boyhood friend a hand at the centre, thinks that if they could get the money together to put up a new building, buy new machines and propel train employees, “there is a lot more than we could do, even in terms of providing employment.”

An additional problem which they have not been able to solve is that of increasing the raw material supplies. At present their main source of waste is discarded plastic from garbage dumps. Factories in the vicinity of ‘Seth Sevana’ also pass on their waste polythene.

But tonnes and tonnes of polythene waste like plastic cones from the garment factories in the free trade zones, are being burned daily even though it polluted the environment, Ferdinands says.

“Seth Sevana could use this waste, but Sri Lankan laws stand in the way,” he asserts. According to rules governing the free trade zones where production is exclusively for export, nothing can be disposed in the local market because factories are given generous tax concessions for the import of raw materials.

“Even if companies are prepared to donate waste, as many have offered, they cannot do so without breaking the law,” according to Ferdinands.

Sri Lanka’s Finance Ministry, who Ferdinands wrote to for relief, has said it was helpless unless special government sanction is provided. The odds are many, but Ferdinands has shown what the disabled can make of an opportunity.