Human development

It has been President Mahinda Rajapaksa's constant refrain that economic progress should go hand in hand with human development.

In achieving this, he has taken several meaningful steps such as promoting the teaching of English countrywide and IT knowledge. By this, what the President no doubt has in mind is to make the population particularly the youth fit into the new order and new avenues that would open up with the country's advancement in many spheres. At the same time, he also ensured progress and advancement in other spheres effecting human development and also access to many benefits and facilities parallel to the country's development drive.

Addressing the 90th Anniversary of the International Labour Day, President Rajapaksa stated "a significant aspect of Sri Lanka's development strategy is our concern with the human aspect of progress".

He said, this was reflected in our human development indices such as, the widespread literacy rate in the country, ready access to health services to all sections of society, the advances made in industrial health, retirement benefits and the many advances in the laws that govern retrenchment and other terminal benefits.

What all this signify is that development and economic progress cannot take place in isolation. The country cannot develop on the one hand while its population is left in want on the other.

The President therefore, should be commended for his far-sighted vision in identifying this dichotomy and taking measures to meet the situation.

The President also said it was the country's pride that no finger has been pointed at it for violating labour conditions particularly at a time when the world attention is being focused on working conditions in countries that export products, especially conditions in factories that have been set up by foreign investors in the West.

Sri Lanka though a Third World country can be proud of its record on the labour front. There is no known case of child labour of the scale reported in other countries and so far no strictures have been delivered against Sri Lanka on this score. Perhaps the country's cultural ethos have a bearing on this aspect unlike in permissive societies where anything is game. Today, our workers are provided with the best facilities and agreeable working conditions. They have also been granted frequent wage rises despite the heavy strain of the economy grappling with a long drawn out war which at last is coming to an end. The working class has the President a lot to thank for in ameliorating their conditions.

It is no secret that most Western countries put up shop in Third World countries due to their cheap labour and chances to make maximum profits by exploitating this labour. These impoverished countries with rampant unemployment have little say in the matter.President Rajapaksa himself a doughty workers rights activist in his days as a young politician fought for the rights of the workers who were similarly being exploited by multinational companies which mushroomed here in the immediate aftermath of liberalisation.

He took up cudgels with the authorities who turned a blind eye on the exploitation of the workers for fear of these foreigners relocating elsewhere. He could justly be proud and happy today, that the working class has been able to break the shackles and advance their lot. Not only here, he even fought on behalf of our workers of the Middle East to obtain for them a fair deal. Today, they are a happy and contended lot.

Steps have now been taken to improve their quality and remove the stigma of being branded across the board as housemaids, with the launch of training programs to impart new skills.

As already mentioned, it has been the President's constant refrain that economic development should go hand and hand with human development and all the conditions and ground work have been laid for achieving this objective.Even the costly war that is being waged did not affect the strides made in the human development sphere.

The President certainly would have taken cognisant of the fact that a high literacy rate alone would be meaningless unless the country's youth be made proficient in the fields that meet modern day employment demands. Hopefully these steps would provide Sri Lanka with a rich pool of skilled talent that would second to none.