Sunday Times 2
Outward bound Lankans and incoming South Asians
View(s):Dr. Sarala Fernando
As a newly recruited Foreign Service officer in the early 1970s, I was sent on an Australian Colombo Plan training course with young diplomats from Australia and the Commonwealth. The course took the trainees to remote places such as Broken Hill, Alice Springs and Broome. In each of these locations there were established Sri Lankan families who, having heard on the local grapevine of a visitor from Sri Lanka, turned up at the hotel and took me home for a Sri Lankan meal.
My colleagues were amazed because this did not happen to any one of them. It was an experience that would be repeated in many different parts of the world during my diplomatic career. In East Africa, there were Sri Lankan teachers, accountants and planters, well liked and settled; in South East Asia by contrast there were more lawyers and entrepreneurs, including jewellers at the top of the social ladder; in Switzerland there were the ethnic or economic refugees, invaluable to the Swiss hotel industry.
The above is not for nostalgic recollection but to understand that we Sri Lankans are a travelling people, influenced by the surrounding seas and island location at the cross-roads of the Indian Ocean, inspired also by the ancient boat builders and mariners as related by Somasiri Devendra. We have a spirit of mobility, little researched but manifest even today in the pilgrimage groups of all ages that constantly traverse this country and have become one of India’s largest tourist groups.
To allow open access to foreign workers without careful regulation will have adverse consequences
Is this the explanation for the craze for motorbicycles and trishaws enshrined in cinema today? This same spirit of adventure has taken thousands out to West Asia as pioneer migrant workers since the oil wealth boom began in the 70s. Such movements occurred outside the purview of government which came to the fore only when protection issues emerged. Diplomatic missions became key, even outside West Asia, like Geneva which led the initiative to tap the hundreds of thousands of dollars of compensation paid to Sri Lankan workers affected by the Gulf war.
My colleagues who have served in West Asia are adamant that the sending of female domestic workers should be banned because they have firsthand experience of the humiliation and abuse these women face due to differing cultural norms and lack of legal protection for females in those countries. These views have influenced recent government initiatives such as the ban on mothers leaving young children. But if my argument is valid that it is not only the attraction of foreign remittances but also the spirit of adventure that drives our people, then the large scale movements to West Asia and elsewhere can never be fully replaced. There is also the human rights angle, the freedom of the women to chose their livelihood and pursue their independence, even after pre-warning of the challenges.
Although we in Sri Lanka often complain of the attitude of the workers at home, Sri Lankan labour is highly valued overseas. Italy is another interesting example — where everywhere you go, Italians are asking for Sri Lankan housekeepers and caretakers, who have a solid reputation. In Europe, Sri Lankans are established in foreign diplomatic missions as household staff, cooks and drivers, a good intelligence service if tapped. In Switzerland, I would often get special attention at diplomatic tables, much to the amusement of my hosts, and on coming out of a function all the Sri Lankan drivers would call out for my driver and make way for our official vehicle. Some foreign ambassadors who stood on their dignity did not know what to make of this camaraderie…
So assuming that travel is at the heart of our people, a natural corollary would be that Sri Lanka will always experience shortages of labour, which some economists have described as a salutary “over-flow” rather than a debilitating “drain”. The mismatch between labour demand and supply in Sri Lanka has been the subject of much academic research from the time of Dudley Seers and others who have offered various explanations. Population dynamics also plays a part since Sri Lanka crossed the demographic transition in the late 1960s and is moving towards an ageing society, with no youth surplus to fuel an ambitious industrialisation like East Asia has seen.
Few have really explored this truth about ourselves and our society, which is that labour shortages is a perennial problem which will probably have to be filled by foreign workers. It would be normal for these foreign workers to come from neighbouring South India, which has been happening over the past few years without much controversy under existing BOI regulations or informal arrangements . These foreign workers range from cooks, tailors and even farm workers to skilled welders in the port, or goldsmiths in Pettah and now construction workers in the high-rises coming up everywhere. Whereas previously such recruitment has taken place quietly, protests are now mounting because the movements are sought to be institutionalised under bilateral agreement like ETCA with India. Well-organised professional and trade union lobbies have come out in opposition and will not give way easily, given the Sri Lankans adeptness to mobilise and the political games of opposition.
Why is the Government giving priority to ETCA, given the history of ancient raids from South Indian kingdoms and the pre-Independence arrival of the indentured Tamil Nadu labour which have left lasting apprehension about large-scale movements of persons from India? Instead, why not spread the recruitment to other South Asian countries like Nepal, Bangladesh or Myanmar? It seems ETCA merely serves a political purpose, to pacify India when Chinese investment and projects are back on line. It is interesting to contrast the difference in bilateral diplomacy.
The Indian approach to ETCA has used public diplomacy, thus the visiting Indian Commerce Minister went out of her way to explain that there were no deadlines and that any eventual agreement would be carefully negotiated to satisfy all concerns. On the contrary, the Sri Lankan side only makes public announcements of imminent dates for the signing as a matter of political prestige, seeming to disdain all public protests!
Even more worrying is that the Government does not seem to have proceeded by a proper examination of where the shortages exist and what safeguards are required to ensure domestic entrants are not shut-out. Sri Lanka has any number of good training institutes well recognised abroad but what has always been missing is the link to job opportunities in the domestic labour market. If the private sector argues that foreign workers are required, a scheme of limited period work visas open to all of South Asia may be the answer supported by a requirement for employers to first give a chance to the domestic entrants to apply through advertisements, as in other countries. There should be attention to proper pricing of the foreign labour; for instance those employing foreign workers should be called on to provide them social security benefits to level the playing field for the local job seekers who have access to free health services.
Moreover, ETCA has run out of time because globalisation itself is now under attack. In the US and Britain, previous leading advocates of free trade, voters have recorded their protest in the form of the Trump victory and Brexit. The Trump announcement to pull out of TPP and renegotiate NAFTA warns that the euphoria on free trade agreements has disappeared, especially in respect of the movement of labour.
To allow open access to foreign workers without careful regulation will have adverse consequences for our Government, given the present clamour for decent jobs and in a democracy where the popular vote count is taken periodically.
(The writer is a retired Foreign Service Diplomat)