Sri Lanka looking at Australian job market

Sri Lanka will take advantage of recent trends indicating shortages of skilled workers in Australia, by exploring possible overseas job opportunities for locals, a senior employment industry official said.

Kingsley Ranawaka, new Chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) told The Sunday Times FT, the Australian Government was offering citizenship for trained workers due to a lack of skilled workers in that country for several years.

Separately several migration agents, mostly Sri Lankan lawyers domiciled in Australia, have been offering their services to Sri Lankans interested in migrating. Many jobs are on offer for skilled and experienced workers below 45-years. According to newspaper ads and migration seminars, agents are offering pay-back guarantees if citizenship is not assured after their fee-based services have been secured.

Meanwhile, the disparity between Sri Lanka’s unemployed and demand for workers in foreign countries is to be tackled by a Skills Development project devised by the Ministry of Labour relations and Manpower.

A senior official of the Ministry said the project would prepare 100,000 young people from poor backgrounds for jobs especially in the construction, insurance, real estate, transport, storage, communications and manufacturing sectors where employment growth rates have been high in the recent times.

The project will restructure and reorient the vocational training system to ensure the quality and relevance of programmes to match the demands of the industry. It will introduce competency–based training, supported by career guidance, entrepreneurship training, trade testing accreditation, staff development and the establishment of a national vocational qualifications system.

According to data prepared by the Labour Market Information Unit, unemployment is high in Sri Lanka especially among rural youth aged between 15 and 29 years. Some 85 percent of the unemployed are from rural areas and over half are females. Yet ironically, 70 percent of current vocational training courses provide trainees with low level skills that have little relevance in the job market. Elementary occupations, craft and related workers, plant and machine operators, service workers, shop and market sale workers are high demand occupations in the foreign labour sector.

The Labour Market Information Unit says there were 54,405 job vacancies overseas of which 45,170 or 83 percent were for males and 3389 or 6 percent were for females. Though there were a large number of vacancies for ‘blue’ collar jobs, the vacancies recorded were significant for even white collar jobs in countries like Qatar, Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

SLBFE’s Ranawaka said there is a huge demand for around 500,000 Sri Lankan skilled, unskilled workers and professionals overseas and the bureau is sending around 275,000 persons due to the lack of skilled workers and professionals to meet the demand. Ranawake said the Foreign Employment Bureau would launch a countrywide vocational training programme to mould youths towards foreign employment with the assistance of the Ministry of Vocational Training.