News
Desperate villagers sweat in the fields for a measly wage
Desperate residents, devastated by the unrelenting drought and unable to make a living, have been travelling 50 kilometres a day from their villages in the Puttlam District in search of work. Many are women, the breadwinners of their famished families.
In the Divisional Secretariat areas of Awagaththegama, Anamaduwa, Wanathavilluwa and Mahakumukkadawala and in many villages in the Rasnayakapura Divisional Secretariat in the adjoining Kuruneglala District, more than a 1,000 Sri Lankans, mostly women, board buses every day to Kalpitiya where they work on the lands for a meagre daily wage of about Rs.1,050. But their real take home wage is Rs 800 once they pay bus fares, which have risen.
They leave their villages between 6:30 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. and work until about 4:30 pm. The women are aged between 20 and 70 years who finish their household chores early to head to work on fields miles away.
Dingiri Menika who hails from the village of Malpanawa said that there has been no proper rainfall for six to seven seasons. “We are despondent. The entire crop has dried up. It is due to this reason we have come here. Our husbands too go out to faraway places seeking daily work. Our earnings have come down drastically. If there was rain we could cultivate our crops. There had not been any rainfall for about five years. So we are compelled to leave our villages and come here. If not for this work we would have died of starvation. In that sense this is a great relief for us,” she said.
Nishantha Maximus Fernando who hires people to work on his field said that the women who come to work are skillful in harvesting crops. “It is difficult to find enough hands for such work these days. I know that more than 1,000 women are coming here to our area daily to work on our fields. We just have to inform the brokers of the number of workers we need. The following day we get the required labour force. They bring with them their meals. We only provide them with drinks twice a day,” he said.