Govt to rebrand foreign employment market

Ramani KANGARAARACHCHI

The government will rebrand the foreign employment market, shifting from unskilled to semi-skilled and skilled categories, Minister Dilan Perera the chief guest at the ILO workshop on 'Recognizing migrant workers,' said in Colombo on Friday.

He said that the government is hoping to establish a close link with the Skills Development Ministry and gradually increase the number of male migrant workers instead of female. He said that it is a little understood fact that migrant workers contributed US $ 4.2 billion in 2010 to the national economy of Sri Lanka which is the highest foreign exchange earner. This sum is 33% of foreign exchange earnings, and 8% of the GDP. This sum financed 80% of import deficit.

He said that Sri Lanka's migrant labour force is female based, housemaid centered, low-skill driven and having a high concentration in the Middle East. Because it is in the 3 D job category - Dirty, Dangerous and Despised - barriers to entry are low. One advantage - if it could be called an advantage, is that these jobs are recession proof, since locals look down their noses on these job. Sri Lanka has no concern about retrenchment.

He said that he believes that Sri Lanka should not continue to be in the degraded job market. Therefore the government has increased the age of housemaids from 18 to 21 and hopes to increase it further to 30, in four years time, considering the vital financial contribution made by housemaids to the economy.

Minister Perera said that the Ministry is trying to ensure the availability of jobs before skills are provided through MoUs. He hoped to visit Malaysia shortly to negotiate another MoU on similar lines. The training programmes conducted by the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau (SLBFE) and the private sector are not sufficient so an MoU with the Skills Development Ministry will be signed to fulfill that requirement. "The Ministry will negotiate jobs aboard, they can help us by training and certifying semi-skilled and skilled personnel. It is best equipped to do this, as it covers 104 occupations at the craft level, and 14 fields at the middle technical level," he said.

He hoped that the concept papers in recognizing migrant workshop will lead to skill recognition of migrant workers. But building skills requires preliminaries. Skills bases could be distinguished from non-skill bases by the use of energy. Minister Perera said that technology is another area that has to be recognized and technology is nothing but knowledge incorporated into machines. A housemaid has to be trained for all this. Energy and technology are useless for skill building unless it leads to productivity. The workshop might consider building productivity improvement as the comparative advantage for Sri Lankan workers. Productivity lies in getting more for less, either by reducing inputs for a given level of outputs, or increasing outputs for a given level of inputs. At the same time, there should be quality standards and indicators of performance, he said.