SLBFE too responsible in Rizana’s case -Job agencies

Chamikara Weerasinghe

COLOMBO: Foreign employment agencies are at loggerheads with Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment and Sri Lankan embassy in Saudi Arabia over the case of Rizana Rafeek, who is on death row in Saudi Arabia for allegedly killing her employer’s baby.

The president of the Welfare Association of Foreign Employment Agencies and Migrant Workers, Faizer Makeen yesterday said the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, (SLBFE) was pointing their fingers at foreign job agencies so that they may easily get away from their responsibility on the matter.

Makeen was speaking at a press conference yesterday at Hotel Nipon, Colombo. The conference was organised by the Welfare Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, an affiliate of the Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies to explain their official stance on Rizana’s case and a new agreement stipulating that signing of foreign job contracts should take place before an officer of the Foreign Employment Bureau.

Makeen said the bureau was responsible for not identifying Rizana’s age and thereby paving the way for an under aged girl to go abroad for foreign employment.

“Rizana was undergoing training as a domestic worker at Foreign Employment Bureau’s Training Centre at Mount Lavinia. The Bureau should have identified Rizana’s real age with her training certificate , which she had produced to the licensed job Agent,” he said. Rizana Rafeek’s passport had been issued by the Department of Immigration and Emigration. “It is said Rizana is under 17 years. But she has been issued her passport with her age at 23,” he added.

“The fingers are pointed at the Foreign Employment Agencies. The authorities are presently contemplating cancelling the license of the Agency concerned,” he said. We will see that the license is not cancelled and the people who are responsible for this would be made to take the full responsibility.”

“But when this incident took place in December 2002, the Agent had immediately written to the Sri Lankan embassy in Saudi Arabia,” he said. He said the embassy in Saudi Arabia had not taken any action to find out where this case was moving in spite of that letter.

For each US$ 25 are paid to the Sri Lankan embassy in Saudi Arabia as a cover of protection for migrant workers, he said.

“The embassy officials there have failed to appoint a law firm or somebody to take up the problems of Sri Lankan workers on an yearly basis,” he said.