The Hindu Business Line : Women domestic helpers keep forex kitty swelling

Many people in southern Sri Lanka are irritated about the near-silence of the international community on the outbreak of hostilities between the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE in the Trincomalee district, triggered of course by the Tamil Tigers blocking a waterway that had affected nearly 15,000 families in a town in the district. Others like Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda, HOD, Political Science, Colombo University, wonder at the Sri Lankan issue having "virtually disappeared from the radar of international media; the BBC barely covers it and your NDTV hardly even has a mention of the military operations going on in the east."

Of course, they add, what is happening in Lebanon is terrible, but then their affairs also need to be reported outside Sri Lanka. Tragically enough, the bombing of Beirut by Israel has affected Sri Lanka in another major way. It is estimated that there are nearly 90,000 Sri Lankans working in Lebanon, of which about 75,000-80,000 would be women working as housemaids.

"I'm told that about 4,000 of these women have fled from the war zone with their meagre belongings. Of course, their safety is important, but I wonder what will happen to their families, most of which remain above starvation levels, because of the money these women send home," says Radia Hussain, a Colombo housewife. Educated in India and the wife of a

businessman, she says women like her feel sorry that the bulk of domestic labour needs in the Middle East are met by Sri Lankan women.

Saman Kelegama, Executive Director of the Colombo-based Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), confirms that the earnings remitted by Sri Lankans working abroad, most of them as housemaids, baby sitters, nurses, and so on in West Asia, constitute the number one foreign exchange income for the country. "Yes, it is the number one foreign exchange earner, accounting for about 9 per cent of our GDP."

He admits that several civil society groups are concerned about the social upheaval it causes in homes where the women leave for jobs abroad, "but there are also other groups that feel something is better than nothing and when they can't get well paying jobs in Sri Lanka they should have the freedom to go and do the job they want."

Both he, and his colleague, Dushni Weerakoon, Deputy Director at IPS, confirm that but for these remittances, Sri Lanka would have had a serious foreign currency problem.

When asked what it does to the psyche of an educated, financially independent person like her to find that the country's forex kitty is built on the backs of its women working as domestic aid abroad, Dushni says, "Well, as economists we would say that it is an export of labour services, we are getting valuable foreign earnings that have supported the balance of payment for the last two decades. Without these earnings we'd have a deficit on our trade balance.

"But from a socio-economic perspective, it's not a very attractive way of earning foreign exchange. Unskilled female labour tends to get exploited and there are lots of socio-economic problems in the Sri Lankan society in terms of family breakdown."

The silver lining, however, she points out, is that analysing the remittances over a period of time, a small slight shift in the pattern of remittances is evident.

"A decade ago, about 80 to 85 per cent of our FE earnings were coming from the Middle East, where the bulk of this female labour in concentrated. But now it has dropped to 60-65 per cent, with more earnings coming from the EU counties, where the higher skilled category of Sri Lankans work under much better working conditions."

Interestingly, says Dushni, the local garment industry is facing a shortage of labour, with some of the free trade zones claiming that they have "vacancies of about 15,000 jobs which they cannot fill. As I understand it, the earnings they would get from the garments industry, along with overtime, are fairly comparable to what they'd earn from overseas; of course, the savings there would be more.

"But there is a certain social stigma about being in the garment factories, and hence, women prefer to go overseas, even if only to work as domestic labour."

On the plight of the women who have returned from Lebanon, she says the Government has promised them Rs 5,000 to travel from the airport to their homes, and also said it would try and get them compensation. "But from the experience of the 1992 Gulf War we know that compensation is difficult and time consuming, and could take up to 10 years to come. Of course, if the situation improves, many of them might go back. But the whole thing is a very tragic and depressing situation," she adds.