LABOUR-SRI LANKA: Gulf Dreams Spawn Social Problems

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

PAHALA KALANKUTTIYA, Sri Lanka, Jan 4 1999 (IPS) - Like thousands of poor Sri Lankans, Herath Bandage Kusumawathie went to the oil- rich Gulf to work as a housemaid, dreaming of making money for a new house and bright futures for her children.

She was back home in a year, and without any money. Her employer forced acid down her throat for daring to drink a glass of milk without permission, scarring her for life.

Kusumawathie was saved from certain death by skilled surgeons. “We wanted a better home and … furniture – a better life for my children. But this is what is left of me,” she weeps.

She can hardly breath through her disfigured mouth. Doctors removed one rib leaving an ugly red scar. Her collar bone juts out of an emaciated body that lives on liquids fed through a tube that hangs out of her stomach.

What happened to her is shocking, but not unusual. Reports of torture, harassment some-times causing death, non-payment of wages, breach of contract, forced isolation are common complaints of Sri Lankan migrant workers in the Gulf.

The Foreign Employment Bureau (FEB) in Colombo, which keeps track, received 6,083 complaints, including 77 deaths between January and September last year. The deaths were due to natural causes, accidents, suicide or murder.

More than 700,000 people from this tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean with a population of 18 million work in countries in the Gulf and in South-East Asia, many as domestic and construction workers. A lingering civil war has sapped the economy, increasing unemployment and poverty.

The bulk of the workers are women, who risk sexual abuse and social isolation abroad. In Sri Lanka, their leaving has spawned a host of social problems: alcoholism, extra-marital affairs, incest and juvenile delinquency.

Labour Minister John Seneviratne insists the government is “aware” of the social impact of the outflow of labour abroad, and taking steps to minimise the effect. “We are aware of the problems when men or women go abroad for work,” he says.

From this month, trained counsellors will be posted in 10 key labour-producing districts to counsel families of migrant workers. “They will try to resolve much of the problems confronting families,” he asserts.

The government will also provide 4,000 scholarships to children of migrant workers in another effort to help families, he adds. According to officials, Sri Lanka’s missions abroad are instructed to take up cases of abuse with their host governments.

Remittances from workers abroad are a valuable source of foreign exchange for Sri Lanka, and all governments have been sensitive to the need to protect its people overseas.

In addition, sociologist Sisira Pinnawala at Sri Lanka’s University of Peradeniya argues that the government has a responsibility to take policy measures that would also take into consideration social concerns and problems.

“Migrant workers … are a liability as well as a resource” for the countries that send them, he points out. “As a resource they are essential for the survival of the state … and therefore the promotion of contract workers migration is in the interests of the state.

“However such promotion can be seen as exploitation and is against the responsibilities of the state,” he argues in a paper on migrant labour presented last year.

The present Chandrika Kumaratunga government has been at pains to protect overseas workers from being exploited. Earlier last year it enforced rigid contracts which the worker, recruiting agent here and abroad, Sri Lanka’s foreign missions and the employer, were required to jointly sign, to ensure protection.

FEB officials say potential migrant workers are also advised to get jobs through the bureau or its licensed agents through programmes on TV, radio and newspapers.

Women who are seeking employment as domestic workers are encouraged to enroll in a ‘training and orientation programme’, where they are taught to use electrical appliances, the food habits and customs of Gulf countries, and what they should do in cases of harassment.

For Kusumawathie there was no hope for redress because like the majority of workers, she went to the Gulf through an unlicensed labour agent who tricked her with a false insurance policy. She mortgaged the family’s half-acre paddy field to pay the agent his fee of 25,000 rupees.

Now her landless husband does odd jobs that bring in barely enough to feed their five children. Kusumawathie is unable to do heavy work. All she is able to do is wash the few soot-covered pots and pans the food is cooked in.

Their thatched-hut in Pahala Kalankuttiya village, in central Sri Lanka, is bare, except for one wooden bed and a few chairs. The family has lost everything.

Doctors have advised Kusumawathie to drink soup, eat eggs and Marmite. “But where is the money for that?” she pleads. “I find it difficult even to buy milk.”