Sri Lankan migrant workers, particularly housemaids, are a much maligned lot. Contributing millions of dollars to the country’s sparse foreign exchange reserves through remittances, every month, they are often hailed by ministers and government officials as a saviour of the economy but beyond that get very little attention.
They don’t have voting rights to ensure they are a formidable vote base (1.6 million workers and their families) to attract the attention of politicians, and face all forms of harassment in the countries where they work.
In this context, a significant event took place on Thursday which is of immense importance to migrant workers where trade unions from Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain signed agreements in Colombo with their Sri Lankan counterparts during a 2-day workshop.
The trade union agreements, aimed at protecting the rights of workers in their workplace and country where they work, is an unprecedented move and seen as a precusor to these overseas unions entering into similar arrangements with unions in The Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh. These three countries have much bigger migrant worker populations in those countries, and who face the same problems.
The Colombo move, initiated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), is also seen as breaking the control on migrant workers by job agencies from here and other recruiting countries. Job agents, blamed in most cases for the problems faced by migrants, say it is unfair to pin the blame solely on them as often workers – housemaids - are unprepared, ill-equipped (language, culture, etc) and untrained to take these jobs.
In April last year, job agents from Sri Lanka and Kuwait came together in Kuwait to sign a memorandum of understanding to ensure the welfare of workers, in another landmark move. There, Zain Milhan, President of the Sri Lanka Manpower Welfare Association (SLMWA) in Kuwait, pleaded for a balanced approach by the media to the issue. “One of the biggest problems is that the worker is ill-prepared, doesn’t have a clue about household equipment or is coerced by fellow workers to jump ship (leave the home of the employer) and seek free-lance work outside. It is a selection problem and also ill-preparedness on the part of the housemaid,” he said.
Nevertheless the migrant worker has been at the receiving end of all concerned – governments, agents and society. Stigmatization is a serious problem and society tends to frown on and provide unfair labels to migrant workers, particularly housemaids, who are compelled to go abroad to keep the home fires burning in the absence of decent-paying jobs at home.
For years, NGOs working for the rights of Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East have been looking for an independent medium overseas to ensure the protection of workers.
The blame-game between these groups, workers and job agents have gone on for the past three decades, until some years back when trade unions here began cultivating relationships with trade unions in Arab states.
The process has been very slow since labour rights is a vexed issue there. Thus the advent of unions has not been an easy task.
However, with the times changing and globalisation taking precedence over many other issues in the world, the barriers have been crumbling and trade unions are gradually playing a key role in political, economic and social development in the Middle East.
The Colombo agreements on migrant worker rights is aimed at granting all labour rights including internationally-recognized standards to Sri Lankan workers, with unions in these countries ensuring that it happens.
A key clause in the agreements is that labour (in this case migrant workers) will not be treated as a ‘commodity’. Other sections in the agreements deal with equally for migrant workers, access to healthcare and protecting workers from dangerous work, among other needs of workers.
The unions will also step in and help workers having a problem in the workplace in terms of a dispute over wages, harassment or any other issue.
“The difference in what we do and what the job agents do is that, we will not charge any fees for services provided to migrant workers. It is a free service,” said Abdul Rahman Alghanim, Vice-President, Head of Migrant Workers Office at the Kuwait Trade Union Federation.
Trade unions and NGOs leading the fight for the rights of migrant workers, higher wages and improved conditions in the workplace are hoping this new development will be a wake-up call for job agents, and also governments, here and abroad.
Migrant workers are an integral part of society and should be treated equally like any other labour segment.
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