SRI LANKA - MIGRATION IN 1999

Sri Lanka continued to support its overseas labor program in 1999 by providing additional regulation, training and expanding the job markets. I is commonly believed that there are 1.2 million Sri Lanka workers abroad, 770,000 of them in the Middle East. Perhaps 80 percent of Sri Lanka migrants are female domestic workers. According to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), nearly 160,000 were deployed abroad in 1998, 30 percent more than the previous year. During the first six months of 1999, 65,307 found employment in foreign countries. Early in the year SLBFE explored opportunities for the deployment of 20,000 industrial workers in Malaysia, while in November similar opportunities were explored in South Korea.

The government intended to reduce the registration fees for overseas workers. Under a law introduced in 1998, migrants must register with the Foreign Employment Bureau. The cost of registration, which lasts for three years, is Rs5,200 for workers earning up to Rs10,000 a month, Rs7,700 for those earning up to Rs20,000 and Rs10,2000 for those earning more. Fees are used for welfare programs benefiting migrants, such as health insurance, scholarship for children, repatriation costs, housing and self-employment loan assistance. The registration program has ensured that ninety percent, according to the SLBFE, of Sri Lanka workers abroad are in a regular situation, up from seventy percent in 1997. At the same time, the government introduced a permanent wage structure that labor recruiters must comply to when deploying migrant workers. In an attempt to increase the protection of workers abroad, the government also deployed two welfare officials in the United Arab Emirates.

Domestic workers, who constitute the majority of Sri Lanka migrants, have been required to take one-month training course before going abroad. Courses are run by the government (19) and by private agencies (22) on the use of modern appliances, banking, health and hygiene. To face the neglect and vulnerability of the children of migrants, particularly when the mother is abroad, a program was initiated to help them cope with social difficulties deriving from the absence of parents. Programs for returnees have also been initiated by the SLBFE on small-scale business ventures. Security of persons was increased, since many returnees, 300-400 a day, mostly women, were victimized on their way home from the airport. Remittances reached US$800 million in 1998 and they account for 16 percent of the total foreign exchange flows, second to garment and higher than the export of tea. In the first six months of 1999 they reached US$497 million.

In the domestic front, the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Authority for the North (RRAN) worked to facilitate the return of persons displaced from the North, where a civil conflict has been going on for years. Estimates indicated that perhaps 10,000 refugees were waiting to return in April. A mandatory registration program extended to 15 September only produced 1,820 registrations. However, the counterattack by the Tamils toward the end of the year brought difficulties to refugee camps and the request for assistance from the World Food Program.