Financial Times

Garment workers fight ‘zipper’ menace at Lankan FTZs
By Dilshani Samaraweera
Female workers in the Biyagama and Katunayake Free Trade Zones (FTZs) are taking to the roads today – against sexual harassment on the road!
The campaign, organised by the Mothers and Daughters of Lanka - a coalition of 15 women’s organisations - called ‘Winning Back the Night’ will see NGOs and garment factory workers take to the streets of Katunayake, from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Over 80 percent of the workers at the two export processing zones are young women in the average age group of 18 to 25 years, working mainly in garment factories. But going to work, to keep Sri Lanka’s number one foreign exchange earner - worth US$ 2.7 billion in 2005 – ticking, is a major problem for women.

Women’s rights groups say ‘on the way’ to work at the two zones is a harrowing experience because of the extent of sexual harassment and theft on the roads. “Men grope and snatch girls walking on the roads. Others stand in the shadows on the roads, at bus stands, near the station, making filthy remarks and exposing themselves,” says Chamila Thushari, a campaign organiser from Da Bindu, a local NGO working on women’s rights in the FTZs.
“The harassment is so common the girls even have a name for these men. They are called ‘zipper men’ because they open their zippers and expose themselves,” says Thushari.Women returning after the night shift are often in danger, as the roads, particularly the interior lanes where boarding houses are located, are poorly lit.

Poor lighting also aids mugging and chain snatching. To ensure their activities are uninterrupted, thieves and molesters are also known to destroy the few street lamps along the main roads.

Women’s rights groups estimate that only about 5 percent of factory floor workers get transport home. Even then the women are dropped off on the main roads and must walk down dark internal roads to their lodgings.

See no evil, hear no evil
Sri Lankan society’s passive encouragement of ‘zipper men’ type perversions has led to other after effects.“We don’t know exactly how many, but there are a lot of abortion places in Katunayake and Biyagama,” says Thushari from Da Bindu. “They charge around Rs 2,000 to abort a two month pregnancy and about Rs 4,000 if it is four months.

There are reported abortions even after 5 months, for about Rs 9,000,” says Thushari. Unmarried girls in the FTZs that get pregnant often end up in prostitution, spawning brothels and fuelling the sex trade.

These realities and unforgiving social attitudes make FTZ jobs a last resort for most women. “If you work in the FTZ you get branded. So women don’t like to work at FTZs. Even if they are working at FTZs they say they are working somewhere else,” says Thushari.

Social problems are more prevalent in Katunayake and Biyagama FTZs, say women’s organisations, because almost all the women workers come from far off places. These women are living away from the traditional protection of family and friends and are easy to trick into sexual relationships.
Women’s groups say FTZs of this kind should be provided with facilities for safe social interaction between men and women, to avoid clandestine relationships.
Another suggestion is to locate factories in villages to allow women to come to work from their homes.

Paper laws and real life
Sri Lanka’s Constitution guarantees the freedom of movement for its citizens, but “the harassment on roads seriously affects the mobility of women,” says Sharmila Daluwatte, a lawyer working on women’s issues.
Sri Lanka has also signed the UN Convention for the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on Economic and Social Rights. Sexual harassment that targets workingwomen violates both Conventions.

The country’s penal code, which provides for legal protection against sexual harassment, is yet another paper tiger when it comes to action. Social attitudes and low wages that start from Rs 5,000 and go up to around Rs 8,000 at most, prevent victims from using the laws. Girls who are raped are threatened with death if they attempt to go to the police.

So there is next to no reporting of rape.“The stigma associated with sexual harassment discourages women from going to the police. There is also the high cost of litigation and very little free legal aid,” says Daluwatte. Meanwhile agents of the law are pathetically limited in applying the laws.

Padmini Weerasuriya, chief organiser from the Women’s Centre - another local NGO campaigning for women’s rights says, “The police patrol the roads when there are complaints but they have the same attitude towards the FTZ worker as the rest of our society. So women get harassed even when they go to the police.”

However, the police are known to arrest women that are on the roads after dark under the 1841 Vagrant Ordinance – a dinosaur law left over from British occupation.

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