A move beneficial for Lankan women

It would be a welcome change if the state decides in stipulating that the employable age for local women seeking work as domestic workers abroad be increased from 21 to 30 years. This measure is reportedly under consideration and we could be speaking up for the vast majority of people in this country by taking the position that an increase in the age criteria on this matter is long overdue.

The trials and suffering currently borne by many local women pursuing the elusive pot of gold in torrid overseas terrains make prophetic the words of those who cautioned against opening the local flood gates to overseas employment for women, nearly three decades ago, when the open economy experiment was tried out with a high degree of heady optimism. The disastrous socio-economic fallout from the indiscreet and indiscriminate availing of overseas employment, particularly in the domestic sphere, by local women has been voluminously documented over the years and they hardly need reiteration. Suffice it to say that tens of thousands of Lankan women have paid a very heavy price for the exceptionally high earnings they have garnered for Sri Lanka.

A local woman who returned to Sri Lanka from a job stint abroad with scores of nails in her person, epitomized the usually silent, long and excruciating suffering of our domestic aides abroad. Hers was just one of the numerous harrowing nightmares. Not few were the instances when women died in agony and in harness abroad and returned to Sri Lanka in coffins. For many of these women, working abroad was indeed a terrible night of despair.

However, these women contributed in no small measure towards the national income and successive governments chose to turn a blind eye on the sufferings and hardships of these painfully labouring women as long as the wheels of the economy were kept humming. However, the administration under President Mahinda Rajapaksa is choosing to think differently on this question and we urge it to go ahead and put the interests of our families and homes ahead of monetary gain, considerable although the latter may be. The choice for our rulers is financial gain or happier families and homes. The tendency thus far has been to put the former above the latter. But some 30 years into market economics and global economic integration, we see some dire long term consequences which are staggering and even unendurable. Just a few of these are: broken and unhappy homes, neglected families and distraught and drunken husbands, immorality among husbands trying to cope with loneliness and children who are left to fend off a range of imperiling hazards.

In other words, the consequences have been deeply destabilizing for Sri Lanka. Our migrant workers have contributed substantially towards the sustenance of the national economy but local society has suffered terribly in the process. For these reasons it is best that more consideration be given to keeping our homes and hearths intact.

Besides, upping the age of employability could ensure that more mature women would take on the challenge of overseas employment. The horror stories originating abroad of the unspeakable harassment, for instance, suffered by many local women migrant workers could be decreased by paving the way for older women with more experience of the world, to take on these jobs. Hopefully, they would show greater resourcefulness in the face of the numerous challenges that await them. But the chances are greater that they would take on the challenges at hand with greater skill and capability.

Accordingly, a national policy on female migrant labour must be put into place and this must be based on the long term interests of the country. While financial gains are important, these cannot be achieved at the cost of human and civilizational values. Social stability and happy homes need to be considered as important as economic gains.

Ironically, on these questions too, we are compelled to see the importance, to a degree though, of the interventionist state. While the closed economy is no longer an option for us, everything cannot be left at the mercy of economic considerations. Human well being would not be ensured by economic forces. There needs to be a degree of state involvement in the resolution of problems of this kind and it is most encouraging that the Lankan state is initiating the necessary policy inputs to ensure human wholeness.

So we seem to have come full circle on the migrant labour issue. Thirty years into the open economy experiment we find that the focus entirely on material wealth at the expense of human values just would not work. Left at the mercy of market forces, a country would propel itself into social and even civilizational chaos.

There needs to be a visionary state to balance the negatives of the consumerist ethos with some policy inputs that would ensure human development.