Kussi Amma Sera was lamenting that a relative had gone to West Asia on work and had got into all sorts of difficulties. “Eyata godak karadara wuna (she got into a lot of difficulties),” she was telling Serapina during their usual Thursday morning conversation under the Margosa tree. I knew the case since Kussi Amma [...]

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Woes of migrant workers

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Kussi Amma Sera was lamenting that a relative had gone to West Asia on work and had got into all sorts of difficulties.

“Eyata godak karadara wuna (she got into a lot of difficulties),” she was telling Serapina during their usual Thursday morning conversation under the Margosa tree.

I knew the case since Kussi Amma Sera had mentioned some weeks ago how a relative had gone abroad ostensibly on a visit visa, found a job and that was where things went wrong. She faced abuse in the household, her wages were not paid on time and the wage was also not what was promised in the work contract.

This week’s conversation on the crisis faced by Kussi Amma Sera’s relative came after she spotted a news item in a daily newspaper on the Family Background Report (FBR) and the appointment of a committee to examine whether it should be continued or not.

According to the report, a 5-member ministerial sub-committee has been appointed to evaluate the possibility of doing away with this controversial requirement which has been criticised for many years by rights groups as discriminatory to women.

“The regulation is against most of the international rights conventions we have signed, and it is gender discriminatory, so we are looking at doing away with it. Further, the report has also opened up a lot of other avenues of abuse and illegal routes of travelling abroad, so it has put the women in a more vulnerable place,” Telecommunication, Digital Infrastructure & Foreign Employment Minister Harin Fernando was quoted as saying in a recent report.

For once a minister appeared to have got it right. Of the 200,000 Sri Lankans who annually migrate to West Asia for work, quite a few women venture out on visit visas due to restrictions placed on their ability to find a job if they have a child under five years of age and also over.

While the FBR bans women with children below five years from going abroad on work, it places restrictions on women with children over five years of age from seeking work outside Sri Lanka unless permission is obtained from the spouse.

The FBR was enforced in June 2013 and in the past five years it has led to a lot of women, desperate to go abroad, finding other unsafe ways to migrate, often leading to human trafficking and other abuse.

The FBR has proved to be controversial and sparked debate on gender discrimination issues and the fundamental rights of women under the Sri Lankan Constitution.
This rule was applied in the aftermath of the execution of underage Sri Lankan female domestic worker Rizana Nafeek in 2013, in Saudi Arabia.

Subsequently, the Supreme Court also dismissed a petition seeking “leave to proceed” by a prospective female worker after her husband, though separated, refused to give his consent (under the FBR) to work abroad. The court took the view that the woman is the primary caregiver in the family and if there is no proper mechanism to take care of her children, she should not leave.

A recent ILO study on the FBR says that “there is growing concern among parts of the central administrative structures that the FBR is failing. It has (also) given rise to irregular migration, with numbers given by officials interviewed, stating that at least 17,000 male and female workers are leaving Sri Lanka per year, using the visit visa option”.

It said the women and men are left vulnerable and susceptible to trafficking. Equally worrying, the ILO said, is that the number of female workers who are not registered with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) fall outside the protection provided by the institution. Since the costs of repatriation are not borne by the Sri Lankan Embassy, it is transferred directly to the agent or the family of the migrant workers, the ILO report said.

In its recommendations having examined the FBR, the ILO report urged the authorities to reconsider the “continued imposition of the FBR on prospective female migrant workers, since the FBR should not be considered a tool to stop women from migrating for employment. Instead, consider the further development of the Family Care Plan or one of the alternatives proposed or a version that is developed through consultation with the relevant officials and the key family members involved”.

The discussion on currently is on seeking an alternative method, to ensure the wellbeing of young children left behind by mothers migrating for work abroad, which is non-discriminatory to women.

There are many cases of women falling into trouble after migrating abroad on a visit visa and finding a job through irregular migration. In one instance, a female worker recruited in one country, was taken by her sponsor to work in another country – crossing the border without proper visa papers. When it was time for her to return to Sri Lanka, she had to leave through irregular channels with bogus immigration papers.

Irregular migration has also seen ‘agents’ in labour-receiving countries coercing workers to leave their jobs in a household and do free-lance work or multiple jobs, instead of working in one household.

This not only makes them illegals — without a proper visa and often with their passports retained by the agent or a particular household — but also at the mercy of the agent. They often end up in safe houses operated by Sri Lankan missions in these countries after encountering problems in the workplace like non-payment of wages, physical or sexual abuse and other rights-related issues.

Even in regular migration, women in particular – in some cases -have been compelled to sign two contracts: One in Sri Lanka and the other abroad giving two different wages.

The ILO report also said that the role of the Foreign Employment Development Officers (FEDO) should be realigned from a policing role to that of officers extending support for safe migration and supporting left-behind children and family members empowering (prospective) migrant women.

It urged the development of a Family Care Plan for all migrant workers, instead of attempting to further revise the existing FBR. “This would allow for a more comprehensive picture to emerge from the family unit and would include other members in the family including those sharing the caregiver responsibilities in the absence of the mother or father and others who can stand in, when the designated caregiver is unavailable,” it said.

The FBR while designed with good intentions in mind has created all sorts of problems particularly affecting the rights of female workers. One hopes the 5-member committee will be able to resolve these issues that would not only ensure the dignity of Sri Lankan domestic workers but also provide for proper care of children left behind with a bigger role for the husband, as the guardian and primary caregiver.

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