Lanka seeks to cash in on booming job market

QATAR: Sri Lanka is looking to exploit rising opportunities for its skilled workforce in Qatar. Foreign Employment, Promotion and Welfare Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said.

He said Qatar and Sri Lanka stood to gain from improving relations in different sectors. The Minister is in Qatar on a four-day visit as part of a tour of the region, which covers Kuwait and Libya. Qatar is his first stop.

Rambukwella said his Ministry was constituted by President Mahinda Rajapakse to fully utilise opportunities opening up worldwide for the workforce.

“As part of the process, Sri Lanka has identified 23 destinations where our professionals could find employment in the coming years and Qatar, because of its enormous development in various sectors, in particular in construction, is ranked amongst the top in the list,” Rambukwella said.

“However, we strongly feel that the job of our Ministry doesn’t end with sending people for employment abroad. The country has a responsibility to protect them as well.” The minister said more than 1.5 million Sri Lankans are working abroad and Qatar has about 80,000 of them.

“Our country is now focusing on reducing the number of women folk working abroad, as part of a social drive because of a number of domestic compulsions,” he said.

The Minister said Sri Lanka greatly felt the need to keep its mothers with their children at home because of social issues.

Family relations are being hit by the absence of mothers employed as housemaids or in other similar positions abroad, he said. Rambukwella said Sri Lanka has been very successful in reducing the numbers of women abroad and as of now, not more than 53 per cent of overseas workers were women. He pointed out that about 32,000 Sri Lankans arrived in the country last year and of them at least 27,000 are men.

The Minister said external remittances were among the top priorities of his country and last year more than $2.5 billion reached Sri Lanka.

Answering a question, Rambukwella said the Qatari Minister for Labour and Social Welfare Sultan Hassan al-Dhabit al-Dousari recently said the number of Sri Lankans in Qatar would double by the end of this year and at least 200,000 Sri Lankans would find employment in this country next year alone.

At present there are about 80,000 Sri Lankan nationals in Qatar, according to embassy sources.

The Minister said Sri Lanka has introduced insurance and pension for its migrant workers to cushion them when they return.

Regarding MOUs with countries employing Sri Lankans, Rambukwella said Qatar was one of the first countries to accept Colombo’s proposals and officials here had not raised any objections when he decided to hike the minimum wages of Lankan migrant labourers earlier this year.