While there are large scale job losses in Sri Lanka owing to the global financial crisis, there is also an acute shortage of workers, a Labour Ministry official said on Friday.
Speaking at an ILO workshop to discuss the jobs crisis, the official said there is a acute labour shortage of 100,000 workers in the plantation sector and voluntary unemployment. Similarly there are some 10,000 vacancies in the Free Trade Zones. He said large companies like MAS Holdings, Brandix, Dialog and Hayleys having downsized offering VRS (Voluntary Retirement Schemes) to top staff managers while not laying off other workers. Trade union veteran T.M. Rasseedin said the Labour Department hasn’t still been able to get proper statistics about the jobs crisis despite having an islandwide network of offices.
Ravi Peiris, Director General of the Employers Federation of Ceylon (EFC), said the EFC began a survey in March of its 540 members to find out data on VRS, retrenchment, termination of employment and layoffs. Some of the preliminary findings from 129 responses received so far shows that 614 employees had accepted the VRS and of this 352 (over 55%) were executives and above and the balance were supervisory grades and below.
Also 50-60 % of the companies say they will not retrench workers but launch job rotation and job sharing schemes. |
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