LABOUR-SRI LANKA: Migrants Risk Lives to go to the West

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jun 20 2001 (IPS) - Ranjit (not his real name) wants a better life than what is possible with his meagre earnings as a fisherman off Sri Lanka’s western coast. So the young man is prepared to brave the odds and cross the seas to Italy or Australia.

“I have friends and relatives in Italy. They will take care of me,” he says, determined to go abroad despite increasing reports of Sri Lankans being unable to reach the country of their choice after several days at sea in overcrowded boats.

If the trend in the mid-1980s was for thousands of minority Tamils to flee from the country’s ethnic unrest and seek political asylum or employment abroad, it is now the turn of dozens of others to use clandestine ways, mainly by sea, to enter the west.

In recent months, there has been a growing number of boatloads of Sri Lankans entering western countries after arduous journeys in boats that sometimes carry 150 people when they were made to take less than 40.

Many have succeeded in sneaking into these countries, while a few vessels have been detected and the occupants detained.

Ranjit says he has paid nearly 500,000 rupees (5,500 U.S. dollars) to a local boatman for the trip to Italy. “The seas are rough at the moment and we will take off when the weather improves,” he said, adding that there were others waiting to join the same boat.

Most of these “special” services are run by agents from the western coastal town of Negombo. Favoured destinations are Japan, Australia and Italy.

Two months ago, a boat carrying 123 would-be illegal immigrants to Italy returned to Negombo after colliding with an Indian vessel while trying to leave Sri Lankan waters. The occupants and their damaged board returned to the island — and into the waiting arms of the law.

The Australian High Commission in Colombo recently warned Sri Lankans against trying to enter Australia illegally, soon after a group of locals were found lost in the outback after they had illegally landed on the coast.

Last week, Ilkka Uusitalo, head of delegation of the European Commission in Colombo, said the European Union was preparing stricter measures to prevent illegal immigrants from countries including Sri Lanka, and ensure they are returned to their country if their claims of political persecution are bogus.

“We are looking at the whole issue of illegal immigrants some of who pay 10,000 dollars to get across to Europe from Sri Lanka via air or sea, carrying forged passports and other bogus documents,” he told a meeting of businessmen in Colombo.

He said the EC was planning to work with Sri Lankan authorities to tackle the growing problem of forged passports, visas and other documents.

“There are thousands of illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka in Europe and it is a serious problem for countries there,” he said. A report last month said Sri Lanka ranked the second highest in terms of people seeking political asylum in Britain.

Poverty, debt and uncertainty over the political situation are driving Sri Lankans to find fresh pastures abroad. Current estimates, in the absence of accurate figures, show that more than 1.5 million of Sri Lanka’s 19 million population are abroad, either as permanent residents, asylum seekers or on short-term employment.

A recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees says that 1.3 million of Sri Lanka’s population were displaced within and outside the country.

Of this, an estimated 800,000 were internally displaced due to the conflict stemming from Tamil rebels’ 18-year-old quest for a separate homeland, mainly in the north and the east. Another 500,000 persons were estimated to be living as refugees in India, Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States.

Raja Korale, a retired Sri Lankan census director and senior statistics advisor to the World Bank, reckons that 150,000 to 180,000 travel abroad on employment mainly to the Middle East and another 20,000 to 30,000 people migrate annually on their own.

A further 5,000 to 15,000 appear to be leaving the country through undocumented and illegal channels.

“There are no proper figures to go by and these are just crude estimates,” he told a recent conference of economists, adding that information from the foreign ministry websites of several countries show that large numbers of Sri Lankans have gained admission as immigrants, visitors and refugees.

Census director Wimal Nanayakkara said a population census on Jul. 17 — the first in 20 years — could provide some clues to the number of Sri Lankans abroad. “It may provide us with some numbers of those residing or working abroad,” he said.

Tamil rebels are opposing the conduct of the population count in the northern Jaffna region, where 50 percent of the population has been displaced and live in refugee camps or have gone abroad.

Korale said that while international migration is said to be a temporary phenomenon because an improved economic situation and quality of life would encourage people to stay in their homeland, current trends show that migration flows are unlikely to tail off in the medium term.

This is due, among others, to the widening gap between local incomes and foreign incomes, the slow growth in wages, rising cost of living, poor savings, insecure employment and social and political unrest in the country.

Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict, triggered by demands by Tamil Tiger rebels for a separate state, has deterred economic growth, channelled millions of rupees to wasteful war expenditures and discouraged foreign investment.

The country has also witnessed two bloody revolutions by leftwing Marxist rebels that cost Sri Lanka dearly in terms of human life and economic destruction. Rising costs of living in the past year, blamed on high world crude prices and a costly war, have added to the woes of the country’s middle and lower income groups.

Korale said that international migration has had an adverse impact on many socio-economic conditions in Sri Lanka, like reducing population growth and a decline in fertility rates.

But migration has also benefited the country through a withdrawal of surplus labour and easing pressure on labour markets, although these benefits are somewhat negated by the fact that most Sri Lankans who go abroad are exceptionally skilled persons.