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SLBFE speeds up return of migrant workers
Plans are underway to increase distribution of airline tickets and quarantine facilities to expedite the migrant workers’ repatriation process.
“We are planning to increase the amount of quarantine facilities by at least a thousand beds in local hotels,” Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) spokesperson Mangala Randeniya said.
He said the SLBFE would pay for these new facilities out of its budget. The SLBFE was also funding the airline tickets of vulnerable migrant workers who were registered with the Bureau in an effort to expedite the ticketing process. “This obviously only applies for extremely vulnerable people since most employees’ tickets are paid for by their employers,” he said.
The spokesman said Sri Lanka was making arrangements on a diplomatic level with main destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which had offered their national carriers free of charge for passengers in their detention camps.
The remittances that were starting to come in were facilitating the new measures the SLBFE was planning on implementing.
Mr. Randeniya also denied social media claims that migrant workers were being made to pay for their quarantine and passage home.
“The SLBFE handles all the expenses other than the airline ticket, any person who can afford a hotel quarantine is free to come via the repatriation route but those coming through the SLBFE only have to buy their airline ticket,”he said.
More than 50,000 registered migrant workers have been repatriated so far. The SLBFE reported that about 35,000 people more were awaiting return. Youth and Sports Minister Namal Rajapaksa who is touring the UAE spoke to stranded migrant workers outside the Sri Lankan embassy in Abu Dhabi, and promised them a swifter passage home.
The SLBFE was slowly returning to normalcy as about fifty percent of the pre-COVID foreign employment registrations, 100 people a day, were now taking place. Licensed foreign employment agents were also active again as new job orders were increasing recruitment levels. The SLBFE had expanded training initiatives for the workers to prepare them for the increasing opportunities, he said.