The Government has been sounding rather pleased with itself of late, and not just about developments on the battlefield.  Its efforts to arrange jobs for Sri Lankans in other countries are bearing fruit too.  The Chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment announced somewhat triumphantly last week that an extra 6,000 people would be sent to Korea next year.  A few days later, the Minister of Engineering Services and Construction declared that he was in a position to offer some 2,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia.  Not long before, the Minister of Labour Relations and Manpower had been promising an additional 20,000 openings in Malaysia and the Minister of Higher Education had been meeting a Libyan delegation to negotiate exporting an unprecedented 50,000 Sri Lankans.  There seems to be no end to demand for migrant workers, and the Government is successfully exploiting it.

Economically, there is indeed something to celebrate.  Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on the money such people are sending home to maintain its foreign currency reserves.  The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment says that private transfers now amount to some Rs. 350 billion per year, which is a significant increase on the Rs. 150 billion per year that was being remitted to Sri Lanka when this administration came to office.  Only the garment industry contributes more to the balance of payments, which is a fact that surely warrants a little in depth reflection.

It is also what people are asking for.  I’m sure we all have plenty of friends, neighbours, relations and casual acquaintances who are keenly searching for opportunities to pack up and leave the country.  It’s perfectly understandable.  If things work out, they can save more in a few years than they would have been able to in a lifetime of pursuing the kind of employment that is most readily available here.  Luxuries they increasingly see other people buying suddenly appear to be within reach, from washing machines and cars to a second floor on the house and foreign education for the children.  I don’t know how many people really achieve such dreams by working abroad, but the prospect is certainly tempting.

The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment is therefore one of the dwindling number of state institutions that actually make a profit.  The Chairman recently announced that he was up almost Rs. 400 million in the first nine months of the year, which is a happy change.  Income came to around Rs. 1.3 billion.  The Government might be able to plug one of the many holes in its budget if it manages to send a few more people overseas.

But I think everybody agrees it isn’t a good thing.  People don’t on the whole really want to leave their homes and settle in a land thousands of miles away from all they know.  It is only elements of the Sri Lankan elite who like to believe anywhere is better than their own country and who have their eyes on naturalisation, and this group doesn’t usually need any encouragement from politicians to set course for elsewhere, typically the West. Most of the others come back eventually. In the meantime, families suffer untold damage as mothers and fathers are kept apart and far away from their children during the formative years of their lives.  People largely go away despite themselves, not because of some genuine desire for adventure. And I’m surely not the only person who finds this profoundly sad.

Migrant workers face an awful lot of problems while they are away too, as anybody who reads newspapers knows.  They basically enter a lottery of sorts. All might be well, but things can also go horribly wrong.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both turned their attention to the fate of Sri Lankan housemaids in the Middle East in the last few months.  In Jordan, Amnesty International reported that tens of thousands of housemaids were living in appalling conditions and being forced to work for nineteen hours per day, while many of them were only being paid some of their wages or weren’t being given any money at all, sometimes for a number of years.  It said the majority of housemaids were exploited and mistreated, while some were also sexually abused.  Human Rights Watch claimed that housemaids were dying every week in Lebanon. I find it difficult to know whether to believe all this after some of the nonsense Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have spouted about this country, but we do know from other sources that life regularly turns out to be really quite tough for Sri Lankan housemaids in the Middle East.

It is only part of the story, of course.  Migrant workers are preyed upon by the unscrupulous in all sectors, both women and men. Just last week, it was reported that a group of Sri Lankans who had paid some $2,000 to agents to organise jobs with a catering firm in Iraq had spent up to three months shut in a warehouse and were now being sent home.

Economically, there are issues too.  Sri Lanka does benefit from the money remitted by migrant workers, and a lot of it goes directly to the rural areas many of these people hail from, but it tends to go into consumption rather than productive spending to build up the economy. The latest trend of encouraging more skilled workers to go abroad is likely to make the situation worse by depriving Sri Lanka of the very people it needs to develop. It isn’t obvious why paying to train people so they can go and work elsewhere is an effective use of state revenue, although it will undoubtedly increase the amount of money coming back here.

Saman Kelegama made a useful point at a discussion on the economic impact of globalisation on the labour market the other day. Talking about India’s experience, he said that it was only after the United States imposed restrictions on the entry of IT professionals that India was really able to start developing its own IT industry. Bangalore wouldn’t have become the centre of excellence that it is today if not for this change in policy, although this obviously wasn’t sufficient. It demonstrates some of what this country may be missing out on by continuing to send people away.

And it isn’t going to stop by itself. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment has registered over 1.5 million people as migrant workers, and more will have gone abroad as refugees, to study or just as tourists and then stayed on.  That means up to seven million people in Sri Lanka are depending on money they get from their relatives abroad, which is one third of the population.  It is a trend now. Anybody who is thinking about how to improve their situation automatically thinks of going abroad, not doing something here. Patiently waiting for the economy to get stronger isn’t going to work any longer, yet this seems to be the only approach pursued.

The Government has taken a number of very useful steps to improve the situation of those who go abroad for employment.  These include the establishment of a complaints unit, the formulation of an insurance scheme to pay out in the event of injury or death, and the idea of pre-departure training. It has for some time been discussing the situation of migrant workers with the administrations in receiving countries, particularly in the Middle East, and a number of agreements fixing minimum wages and other useful guidelines have been signed. The Government has also started collaborating with sending nations, which is another important move.