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GSP Plus: EU team here on fact-finding mission
A European Union delegation will arrive tomorrow on a fact-finding mission prior to any restoration of the GSP Plus trade concessions that were withdrawn in 2010 over the country’s poor human rights record.
The delegation led by Mark Vanheukelen will hold talks with Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake, Commerce and Trade Minister Rishad Bathiudeen and trade union leaders, an official of the EU mission in Colombo said.The delegation’s visit comes following a request from the new Government to the EU to restore the GSP Plus facility.
Anton Marcus, General Secretary of the Apparel Free Trade Workers’ Union (AFTWU), said he had sought a meeting with the delegation to bring to their notice several pressing issues regarding the welfare of the workers, mainly those in the apparel sector.
He said they would also discuss the Government’s failure to make public a report by a commission that probed into the death of Free Trade Zone worker Roshen Chanaka in an alleged police shooting in March 2011.
Before the withdrawal of the GSP Plus facility there were some 838 apparel factories in operation with a work force of about one million. However today there are only 314 factories with some 300,000 workers, Mr. Marcus said.
He said that prior to this, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) had taken up Sri Lanka’s FTZ issues with the EU trade mission in Brussels.