Plans to send more professionals to ME
Rasika SOMARATHNA
"Sri Lanka plans to send fewer housemaids to Middle East countries
with the focus shifting on exporting more skilled manpower, Foreign
Employment Promotions and Welfare Minister Dilan Perera who is currently
visiting several Gulf countries said, speaking at the Sri Lanka
Employment Promotion seminar in Dubai during the weekend.
According to the minister, authorities are unofficially discouraging
Sri Lankan women from taking up housemaid jobs abroad while encouraging
both males and females to take up employment as professionals in a
variety of fields.
The minister said that the government has implemented various
programmes to train the country's migrant worker hopefuls in various
job-oriented skills.
"An innovative mechanism is currently being developed in Sri Lanka to
implement job-specific, country-specific, company-specific training
programmes for citizens who seek foreign employment opportunities", he
said.
He added that Sri Lanka is next to China in the Asian Human Resources
Index. It is further building human resources, having competent
Universities and Technical Schools, the minister said. The minister was
in the Gulf to explore opportunities in skilled and semi-skilled labour
supply.
He is also looking at possibilities of backward integration in
building education institutions in collaboration with Dubai
entrepreneurs.
The minister while inviting investors to invest in these ventures
said that they would be able to produce semi-skilled and skilled
personnel for the entire Middle East job market. He added that the
Middle East was in the middle of a development wave never seen in world
history. Therefore, a lot of employment opportunities were on offer for
outsiders.
The minister along with a 11 member delegation was in Qatar before
visiting UAE. He is also slated to visit Saudi Arabia. |
