Migration and retaining talent

Stop-start, stop-start policies: That is the best description of the country’s policies on migration for work, particularly to West Asia. But before I could settle into this week’s topic on the above issue or calling Kalabala Silva, the often agitated academic, for his thoughts on this matter, I was drawn to the conversation under the margosa tree.

“Ahunada ara aluth sinduwa – ‘Gaalu Paare’. Eka kiyanne naeseegiya Sunil saha eyage sahodaraya Piyal. Harima lassanai. Mama ekata godak ahunkam denava (Have you heard that new song ‘Gaalu Paare’ by the late Sunil and his brother Piyal. It is very nice. I keep listening to it often),” said Kussi Amma Sera.

This is very true, as I have heard this song in the kitchen while Kussi Amma Sera is cooking.

“Eh sinduwa kiyala thiyenne Sunil nethi wenna issara wela, avuruddakata pamana kalin. Ratata loku paaduwak eya nethi wechcha eka (This would have been recorded before Sunil died more than a year ago. What a loss it was to the country),” noted Serapina.

“Harima avasana wanthai. Nethnam api balaporoththu wune Sunil aluth sindu kiyai kiyala ne. Eyage sindu janapriya, eya lankawe inna saema janatha kottashawala avashyatha saha abilashayan gena hinda (Unfortunate, as we always expect Sunil to come up with a new song. His songs are popular because they convey the needs and aspirations of all communities in Sri Lanka),” said Mabel Rasthiyadu.

Having listened to their thoughts on one of Sri Lanka’s most lovable musicians, I called Kalabala and asked him whether he has been following the developments in the migration field.

“Yes, I have in particular followed the recent issues regarding women going on visit visas to Dubai and Oman, searching for employment and forced into prostitution and other sexual favours,” he said.

“They have arrested an official of the Sri Lanka mission in Oman for alleged trafficking and smuggling of women. Unfortunately these issues are not uncommon and have been happening for a long time,” I said.

“The bigger problem (as you told me in an earlier conversation) is that our policies are lopsided and there is absolute confusion in dealing with outbound migration for work,” he said.

That’s true: Sri Lanka has so many policies dealing with those seeking work overseas, particularly in West Asia, and no consistency in these policies. Policies keep changing with changing governments and the biggest culprit, errant employment agents, go scot free all the time. The arrest of the official of the Sri Lanka mission in Oman is just one example of the authorities cracking the whip and this time because of riveting media attention on the plight of women who had gone on visit visas and were stranded in Oman.

It’s particularly easy to obtain a visa to Dubai, and now Oman, with the former city (part of the United Arab Emirates) fast becoming a hotbed of smugglers, drug barons and trafficking – particularly Sri Lankan drug lords.

With the economic crisis mounting at home, many Sri Lankans have been trying to find jobs overseas and in the case of domestic workers, they fly to Dubai and Oman on visit visas with the connivance of local job agents. They are promised jobs there on arrival. At this point they are coerced into working illegally and often forced into slave-like work.

A bigger problem that has not been addressed so far by policy makers and even think-tanks like the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and other like-minded organisations in Colombo, is the need for a consistent policy on migration vis-à-vis the brain drain and what happens to the country’s labour force if professionals and unskilled workers are going abroad.

Recently the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) advised the Ministry of Foreign Employment and the Bureau of Foreign Employment to prepare a programme to send more trained workers to foreign jobs with the plan linked to vocational training institutions. Will another committee change these plans when Sri Lanka faces an acute labour crisis?

For example, the hotel sector is losing a lot of talent as many workers are going abroad due to the economic crisis but significantly at a time when tourism is gradually reviving. According to some reports, there is at least a 20-30 per cent shortage of hotel staff with a likelihood looming on the need to import labour to fill these vacancies. The same issue confronts the construction industry (which is stagnating now due to the economic crisis), where workers were brought in from India, Nepal and Bangladesh some years ago.

There is no clear policy: On one side Sri Lanka is encouraging outbound migration for work and training personnel like in the case of Korea which is offering fantastic salaries and other categories like engineers, doctors, etc, but if and when the economic crisis eases and Sri Lanka is on an upward growth path, where are the workers to service the economy?

Thus our policies on migrant workers are lopsided, shortsighted and unsustainable.

A few weeks ago, Women and Child Affairs Minister Geetha Kumarasinghe said she was proposing to ensure only women who have children above five years can go abroad, from over two years now. The earlier rule – women with children aged above two years can go abroad – was after numerous requests by NGOs working in the field of migration saying women should have the right to choose to seek an overseas job particularly to help the household income. The problem with these rules is that they are not constant and tend to change with new governments and often dictated by the whims and fancies of the minister in charge of the subject.

Sri Lankan authorities have been wooing Sri Lankan expatriate workers to increase remittances with the offer of electric cars/ motorcycles and housing loans for workers.

There was also a harebrained scheme by Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment Manusha Nanayakkara to bar Sri Lankan domestic workers from going abroad if they had failed to send remittances through official channels on a previous term of employment! How can you stop people from the fundamental right to travel abroad?

The Central Bank’s annual report for 2021 said a notable recovery in remittances is expected in 2022 with the sharp depreciation in the exchange rate since March 2022, together with the increasing number of migrant workers leaving for foreign employment. However, worker remittances were still low by 40 per cent in the January-October 2022 period at US$3 billion compared to nearly $5 billion in the same 2021 period.

The authorities have also partially lifted the compulsory requirement of the Family Background Report (FBR), helping more female migration for overseas employment.

Earlier the FBR barred females with children under five years from going abroad which led to many abuses of this provision. Many, in desperation, used unofficial ways of getting the FBR from local officials.

Kussi Amma Sera walked into the office room with my second mug of tea, humming the tune of ‘Gaalu Paare’ and as she walked back to the kitchen, I wondered when the country will come up with a consistent policy of promoting foreign employment and at the same time retaining Sri Lanka’s talent pool.