Should Sri Lanka follow suit?
If so how should we rationalize the argument?
The link below shows the rationale for
the action by the Philippine Government.
It is estimated that there are 250,000 Filipinas
working in Kuwait, most as maids and domestic helpers. In total the Philippines’ foreign workers remit US$2B a month from
all over the world, a little over double that of Sri Lanka. The action is taken
due to a rising, though still a TINY minority of abuse cases be they sexual or
otherwise, leading to slavery and suicide.
We in Sri Lanka can also identify with
this issue, and again the incidence is small. The philosophical question is how
small is small and how much is acceptable? Is this stance by the Government
pushing the Kuwaitis into taking action against their own citizens who are the
abusers?
Muslim countries don’t send their women
folk to work in the Middle East, so Sri Lanka and the Philippines fill this
void, and even India discourages women from working in the Middle East. I know
there are Nepalese, but even here, it is the men who go and work in very
difficult conditions, many dying in Qatar while building their air-conditioned
Soccer Stadiums for the World Cup, in the intense heat and poor working
conditions. All this is borne out of poverty.
We must understand that while the
economy benefits by worker remittances, we as a country must count the social
cost. In this regard, recent developments prevent women with underage children
from going, but many flout this law, by forgery or lying about their
dependents, as I personally know women who have left leaving infant children
recently.
If you ask the majority of workers in
Kuwait, if they want to return there will be an overwhelming NO, as their money
is what keeps their families in Sri Lanka from hunger, and many have gone to
flee from abusive husbands who arguably can be worse than abusive employers.
While people should be allowed to go of
their own free will to better themselves, they MUST be made aware of the
consequences, and if they find themselves in an abusive situation, they need to
know how to extricate themselves from it, using the assistance of the Embassy
there, and their passports must not be held by the employer.
Look at this from the Middle East Employer side
ReplyDeleteThe employer pays a large fee to the employment agency to get the worker, sometimes 50% more than he pays the maid. So if the maid feels she is underpaid, as she has time to compare with others, and some who have worked 10 years maybe earning $1,500 a month, while the new one is on $500. So she cries abuse and leaves to the Embassy, hoping she would be placed elsewhere for a higher income!
In this situation more will cry foul than are actually abused, and ask any Ambassador in the Middle East and they will corroborate that our Sri Lankan ladies are very good at telling lies to better themselves or to get what they want.
When abuse cuts both ways, and actually the it is the maid who abuses the system more than an employer who does not want to risk being blackballed by agencies, think about the reality. I am not saying abuse does not take place, but how do you tackle the genuine from the false?
It is an expectation problem.
ReplyDeleteThe agency in Sri Lanka lie to get a person sent, promising higher income than that which they will get, so they can earn a commission from each person they send running into about Rs500,000 each. So it is greed, and the lie through which the innocent woman is sent, results in them saying that they are abused and want to leave, as the only way to get out of the contract that binds them for a minimum period.
It is this abuse by local agencies that MUST stop first, in making false promises, about pay and conditions, just to entice workers to sign up. The few lakhs paid up front is a great incentive sign up, without the maid realizing that she is getting an up front payment of her meager wages here and not a windfall as it is coated by the Agency.
By signing up she signs a few years of her life to slavery, she does not expect, and so they suffer through deliberate miscommunication.
It is the DUTY of the Foreign Employment Agency of the State to give the facts in advance, so our women go with eyes wide open to the pitfalls, rather be fooled on arrival.
It is the least educated who go as they are the ones easily fooled. So if our education was better, so women are able to sense a trap, she will not fall into it. Our culture wants to keep women permanently under the men's thumb as the President has just opined. So it is the poor woman who gets the short end of the stick.
It is time to explain to women why they are being treated as second class citizens. so men can live off them even in the Middle East, while they are happily getting drunk on their remittances while abusing their own children, all because we have idiots as Presidents and Politicians, elected by us idiots no doubt.
The real problem here is the Foreign Employment Agencies. Money and Mammon is their God, they don't care about human life sent to serve or service.
ReplyDeleteThis business is a multi billion dollar business, which is paid for by the workers who toil in the end, so the luxury cars, houses and trappings can result, both in the Middle East and in all the Countries that supply labor
Only Korea does it well, as they are a disciplined and organized country that works together.
Simple really, we cannot change the behavior of people in other countries, but we can change the behavior of people in our country.
ReplyDeleteSo first respect the woman, the wife and mother. There is more spousal abuse occurring in Sri Lanka daily than any abuse in the Middle East. Why is that not even a talking point here?
We must publicize this just like the me too movement, and shame the male in our society for treating their women as second class citizens. Just look at the President for starters, so you don't have to go any further. He is setting the example for abuse by making women non human!
So it is time for the media to highlight the mistreatment of women IN SRI LANKA first and empower women to report and thereby stop it by shaming the men who do so. How about tying them to a tree in a public place with their mouths shut so they cannot speak, but a warning say don't get too close, to this abusive husband. He may finally be shamed to realize his behavior is out of order. Maybe he has to stop alcohol, as the only way to change his frustration.
Duterte is trying to draw attention away from his own abuse of HR to that of others. Clean your own stables before cleaning others.
ReplyDeleteYes he is killing drug lords in the only way he knows, but all his goons are killing everyone they don't like by accusing them of being drug pushers, remember the JVP time in Sri Lanka? when we did the same, killing all young people by the Army just because they were young, and so they killed a whole generation and there was NO UN enquiry into the 50,000 killed, so the 4,000 killed during 2009 is small fry in comparison. Allegations must be proportionate.
All Sri Lankan races and religions, except perhaps the Burghers are a highly misogynistic.
ReplyDeleteIronically it is worse than the Middle East, and with the exception of Saudi Arabia women have relatively more freedom, and men are better behaved due to the alcohol restrictions and closet drinking.
So it is obviously time to teach the children to be equal as the burden of the economy is borne by the women who have relatively little or no political or economic power.
Show me a Foreign Employment Bureau run by a woman that recruits women! There you are, enough said
These are all very interesting and valid points that MUST be noted in trying to analyze the problem and find suitable answers to the issues at hand. It is clear that it must be part of the overall behavioral practices that need to change in our society, to give the women a rightful place in society, to enable them to make the right decision for themselves and their families.
ReplyDeleteI will list in no particular order of importance, changes that need to be made in our society to correct our own behavior, which will inevitably result in more empowered women, seeking employment overseas, and do so when all options have been evaluated, rather than the present which is the ONLY option available to a suffering woman to get away from their dreadful lifestyle, a foreign job being the perceived answer to all ills, and not face the music at home. Empowering is the only means by which they can take control over their lives, and will then, in most cases ensure the husband is yanked into the reality of his position leading to a better home life, and lesser need to leave for overseas employment.
With an economy that has over 1Million vacancies in Sri Lanka, there is really no need to go overseas as a maid, but the conditions must improve to keep them stateside!
Education from pre-school on a new culture of one ness between male and female will be a start, as then the prejudices that begin from birth can be neutralized. Women are part of the problem as our society thinks suffering is part of life and the woman’s part in the family is to suffer for the man. So conceptually, the Buddhist Clergy must be forced to preach the teachings of the Buddha and not their personal warped interpretations of suffering that have created this nonsensical acceptance of repression.
There is too little discussion of these issues, as few wish to intellectualize that which is important to improving the quality life, wasting one’s breadth on political gossip and the level of corruption of those in power, but do nothing to throw the rogues out once and for all, and keep voting them in.
Think about it. Usually there is a movement of the most mobile and most productive people from a lower wage economy to a higher wage economy to improve upon their economic level. This also referred to as a brain drain, and so a loss of skills to the home country. As long as these people remit money back to their families, that is a positive. However increasingly higher skilled people move with their families, and so do not remit anything but that which is needed to take care of an elderly relative or some such. In this instance, the host country is a bigger beneficiary as these people actually help the host economy enormously.
ReplyDeleteUsing this logic, Sri Lanka has aided the US, Canada, UK, NZ, Australia, and to a lesser extent much of Europe to the tune of billions of US$ by sending them a trained human resource. WE have not received even a fraction in return for this aid.
The unskilled migrant labor on the other hand, remit almost all of their incomes to support their families back home, and are an invaluable part of the foreign exchange earnings of the mother country. In fact some economies completely depend on it. To name a few, Egypt, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have a large percentage of GDP from these remittances, that prop their otherwise bankrupt economies. The need this source, and to think the lowest grade on the totem pole is doing this in Sri Lanka should shame us.
We must study the needs of host countries and send people after training for specific skills that are in short supply that do result in families going away but only the preferably male breadwinner for a maximum of three years, to put the family finances up a few notches. This concept works beautifully with Korea, and we should be thankful for the Koreans who are enabling this fair exchange of labor for remittance to take place. We should learn from this and try and get other countries to adopt this approach, and the Country I think has the most potential for is Japan, where our workers skilled in say Geriatric Care, can go to Japan for 5 years and help in the skill shortage in Japan in those jobs and earn nearer US$3000 a month and remit at least half that to their families, and so train health care workers with this carrot in mind.
We have to think out side the box on these novel approaches, that could benefit the Country with minimal social disruption and psychological scars that the present system entails
Re above excellent suggestion, we dont have even one leader or politician with the brain to make such a suggestion. That I am afraid is the tragedy and lack of leadership in Sri Lanka where morons rule, 225 morons in fact in Parliament.
ReplyDelete