The news that about 20,000 Sri Lankan women are likely to fall prey to human traffickers is shocking. We yesterday pointed out quoting the Migrant Service Centre (MSC) that the female workers whose jobs are at stake in the garment industry would be victims of illegal labour recruiters and other manpower contractors awaiting easy prey. These women will, our report says, be lured across the national borders for employment including sex trade.

Sri Lankan women who have sought foreign employment through shady job agents are already languishing in West Asia. Many are the complaints of torture and sexual abuse they suffer at the hands of their foreign employers. Hundreds of them return home after years of semi slavery, empty handed. Voiceless, they suffer in silence.

Human trafficking is nothing new in this country. Year in and year out, we hear of the youth who brave stormy seas in fragile fishing trawlers bulging at the seams in search of employment in far away countries like Italy. Mishaps are not uncommon. Some have been choked to death inside containers or died in freezing weather. And the loss of jobs in the garment sector and the attendant vulnerability of a large number of workers, are going to aggravate an already bad situation.

Recently, the international media shed light on a large scale racket of women being smuggled into Britain from Eastern Europe for prostitution. Each year, according to the US State Department, 'at least 800,000-900,000 people, mostly women and children are trafficked across international borders. Even more victims are trafficked and exploited within their own countries. Many victims are lured from their homes with promises of well-paying jobs. Once they are deprived of the opportunity to return home, they are coerced into prostitution, domestic servitude or factory labor and other types of forced labor.'

With nearly one half of Sri Lankans living in abject poverty and unemployment being on the rise, the MSC warning needs to be given serious thought and action taken, if a disaster is to be averted. We hear of frequent government warnings to prospective foreign job seekers against errant job agents. These agents are operating in the open and it is intriguing why successive governments have done little to put them out of business. Is it because they are throwing money around? Legal measures are a prerequisite for dealing with them besides raising awareness among the public.

Even those licensed job agencies need to be closely monitored and the bad ones weeded out. For, migrant workers who gained employment through them have also been condemned to servitude abroad. Thorough investigations are called for into each and every complaint by migrant workers and action taken against the recruiters concerned. Let none of them get away with their sordid operations.

After the late President Premadasa launched his garment factory programme with a view to taking industries to the rural backwaters, he was asked in an interview how confident he was of the future of the industry. An overconfident Premadasa in his inimitable style quipped: "As long as the people wear clothes, the industry will be safe!" A cynic may ask whether the loss of jobs in the garment sector is consequent to the people beginning to wear less clothes. Had he been alive, arguably, he might have adopted measures to put the industry on a firm footing.

Be that as it may, our over dependence on the Juki Economy has proved to be counterproductive and but for the tsunami, the situation could have been far worse as the proposed quota cuts would have been fully effected. The time has come for us to think of alternatives and to equip the garment industry to meet challenges ahead of it. An uphill task, no doubt! But that is what governments are there for.

Most of all, there is a pressing need for improving the lot of the voiceless garment workers who are toiling amidst untold hardships. Instances of sexual abuse of garment girls and other forms of harassment are many. The living conditions of the exploited and malnourished workers are appalling. The sub culture that has evolved around the garment industry is one of exploitation and social stigma. Garment girls have come to be dubbed derisively by perverts including private bus crews as Juki Keli (pieces). As much as migrant workers, they, too, deserve a better deal from a society dependent on the dollars and pounds they help earn. That is where workers' rights groups, women's lib activists and politicians have failed as a whole––quite pathetically!