Employment generation and social peace

Reports that more and more Industrial Zones are planned for the Northern Province are welcome news and we hope these projects would be gone ahead with expeditiously. Besides ensuring the steady industrialization of the North, these ventures would result in more and more employment opportunities for the youth of the region and satisfying and paying occupations are some of the best answers to social disaffection of any kind. A lack of employment opportunities has been a significant factor in almost all bloody youth upheavals which have erupted the world over, and Northern Sri Lanka is no exception. As we have continually pointed out in this commentary, ethnicity is an outgrowth of mass disaffection over concrete social conditions, such as, lack of educational and employment opportunities and these conditions were observable in the North-East in the run-up to the outbreak of the conflict.

Therefore, employment generation is a crying need in the North, now that terror has been vanquished. The establishment of industries and relatively labour intensive enterprises in the region would ensure that the problem of youth unemployment could be resolved to a degree and a policy of systematically developing the vocational, technical and other relevant skills that could help in enhancing the employability of the North-East youth must be consistently followed.

It is encouraging that in this major industrialization exercise the state is playing a significant role along with the private sector. There are already reports of public-private sector partnerships in some of these industrial ventures and this is a most commendable policy because it would be instrumental in fostering a sense of identity among the youth concerned with the state. If a sense of estrangement with the state alienated sections of the North-East youth from the state in the past, this problem could now be resolved to some extent with the state being seen as going to the assistance of the youth.

We hope more and more public and private sector enterprises from the rest of the country would explore the possibilities of establishing themselves in the North-East. The government, we are given to understand, is fully supportive of these efforts at getting blue chip companies in particular to invest heavily in the North-East and to make judicious use of business and commercial opportunities in those provinces. The essential condition for the proliferation of economic activity, which is peace, has been established and the stage has now been set for the further development of the North-East and for the steady integration of the regions concerned with the South.

Separatism was given an opportunity to prosper in the North-East because steady development activities could not be pursued in the concerned areas on account of the conflict. In any case, some administrations of the past did not consider developing the North-East a top priority. One recalls that the North was assigned a ‘District Minister’ at one time but this person never visited the Northern Province. Small wonder that the conflict was steadily aggravated!

It should be noted that the North is a most productive and growing region. The 22 percent growth registered by the province is a pointer to the entrepreneurial and wealth-generating potential of the region. The North-East, apparently, could be partners in national progress and it is up to the state to ensure that the provinces in question integrate themselves further with the national economy and contribute to the wealth of the nation.

Business is a great leveler. The possibility of establishing businesses which are viable in the North-East would not only bring the business sectors of the countries together but help in promoting people-to-people contact among our communities which could go some distance in fostering a sense of nationhood. That is, business could push the nation-building project.