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| Sunday, 13 July 2003 |
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Migrant workers urge the Govt. to help their plight By Chamikara Weerasinghe The International Convention on protection of the rights of migrant workers became operative on July 1. The occasion was marked with a demonstration at Lipton circus, where around 300 migrant workers, their families and relatives urged the government to protect the rights of migrant workers against incidence of undue exploitation, harassment and violation of their human rights. The demonstration was organised by the Action Network For Migrant Workers (ACTFORM), an NGO established in 1990 to help fight for migrant workers' rights. The international convention was first drafted in 1990, but it did not come into operation as two of the twenty countries required to ratify it did not do so. However, Bangladesh and Malaysia had ratified it recently. The Co-ordinator of the Action Network For Migrant Workers, Mrs. Viola Perera, was asked how they planned to help utilise the new convention to help resolve problems faced by migrant workers in the future. She said: "Initially, we plan to take legal action against the wrongdoers. We are already in the process of preparing papers for that. And we will take steps to keep the government alert on a constant basis about incidents violating the rights of migrant workers, and urge them to take action against such instances and restore their safety". Q. What do you mean by their rights? A. According to the international convention, their rights include liberty and security, protection against violence, physical threats and intimidation, freedom from torture or degrading treatment, freedom of thought and religion, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, equality before courts and tribunals, treatment with respect for the inherent dignity, same treatment as nationals in State of employment with respect to remuneration and conditions of work, and access to education for children. Q. To what extent have the rights of the Sri Lankan migrant workers been affected? A. To the brim, I must say that almost all these rights have suffered. For this year alone, we have ten women, who went for work as housemaids and in the end returned home pregnant. And there are about 250 women who were forced to leave their jobs because of sexual abuse and physical torture. The extent of their suffering is transparent, because some of these women have lost their limbs, some their eyes. The Foreign Employment Bureau is yet to pay compensation for them. Also, parents of some fifty young girls seek help from us to find their children as they have not written to them since they had left the country for Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi for housemaid jobs. Q. Whom do you think should take the responsibility? A. That is where the problem is. There is no one to take the responsibility or to compensate the poor maids when they suffer the consequences of a problem. When the migrant workers go to the relevant authorities in this business, they are sent from one place to another- Foreign Employment Bureau to Ministry of Labour- Labour to either Bureau or the foreign job agent, and so on. They are going in circles getting hardly any compensation under the system. Q. How do you explain the gravity of the issue? A. The gravity of the problem is felt when you look at the number of families that suffer when their jobs are affected with deterioration of health, broken limbs and broken families. Most housemaids who go to the Middle East are from villages, mainly from districts of Polonnaruwa, Kegalla, Galle, Puttalam, Kurunegala and Badulla. The authorities do not seem to care enough for the workers. We receive 200 to 400 letters every day from the affected parties. Q. But, do not their foreign job-related Insurance Schemes help them uplift their lives when they were in trouble? A. The Insurance documents for migrant workers are in English, and therefore migrant housemaids cannot understand the terms and conditions set out. So are the job contracts signed between them and the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. These have to be translated into Sinhala for the benefit of the employees. Q. How about the training that housemaids receive from the Bureau? A. Training needs a lot of improvisation as it does not do much for the housemaids other than train them to become obedient servants. |
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