Soon on the heels of the press reports about the “White Party” at which locals were summarily barred at the gate and disinvited beforehand, is the news of tourists running businesses down south. While tourism has proved to be a lifeline in the country’s economic recovery, this news about tourists brazenly running business in the country comes as a shock.
Why aren’t the authorities not taking action? It’s because they have been slow in tackling the issue that has been going on in parts of the country for some time now.
This happened during the immensely successful Galle Literary Festival as well. No matter how much good one has to say about the festival there would be those who want no criticism whatsoever. This writer, who had a healthy thumbs up and a loud round of applause for the GLF organisers, is sad to disappoint them with a modicum of criticism.
At the GLF some of those involved — the writer is certain that this was not the intent of the organisers per se — tried to keep the finale, a hastily organised cricket match exclusive to tourists and others, that are mostly white-expats living in Galle, despite the fact that festival organisers had explicitly invited everyone.
However, when guests presented themselves at the gate, they were flabbergasted to learn that whites and tourists were waived past the gate, while locals were detained at the entrance if they had ‘no passes.’ They didn’t have any, because all were freely invited and none were issued.
Nobody asked for passes from any of the random tourists who waltzed past the entrance, it is to be noted.
DISCRETION
This fiasco was no better than the party in Unawatuna where the tickets stated explicitly Face Control — Whites Only. Additionally, the authorities have now been faced with a new contagion, which is the late-breaking phenomenon of tourists running businesses in the South.
This writer was able to witness such an operation in Galle. That had nothing to do with the GLF it has to be emphasised, but in the periphery of the festival there were whites ordering around locals over the phone.
Let’s just say that further inquiry revealed that these young foreigners were running bootleg business operations employing locals who had very few avenues of gainful employment.
The employers were tourists that had absolutely no legal right to engage in business activity. This was something that was expressly forbidden under the conditions they had been granted their visas, for temporary stays.
Locals say that this tendency has led to a powder-keg situation in which very soon some of the locals and the tourists engaging in illicit business activity would come to blows, or declare war against each other.
That’s not a situation that the authorities should encourage under any circumstances, as it would inflict enormous damage on the now flourishing tourism industry which has thrown a lifeline to many entrepreneurs engaged in the travel and hospitality trades.
There were of course always the reports of some tourists engaging themselves in sex work, and that is something of an urban blight that had a rather long history.
Though sex-work by tourists is not an activity that can be condoned by any means, at least these prostitution rings operate off the grid so to speak, meaning that they conduct fairly clandestine operations generally within enclosed spaces, and with some amount of necessary discretion.
ENTERPRISES
Not so the tourists running business in the South. These foreigners who hail mainly from the former Soviet Union countries, have, thanks to some capital they have managed to siphon off into this country, managed to set up operations where the some of the locals are too poor and seed-money starved to set up enterprises of their own.
While the practice of soft-apartheid practiced by anyone is abhorrent — it is rumoured that the organisers of the white party in Unawatuna have since apologised after adverse press coverage — the soft takeover or at least attempted takeover of local community economies by a few tourists is totally wrong, and dangerous at many levels. It has to be emphasised that it’s a very tiny minority of tourists who engage in this type of activity, but action should be taken against the few nevertheless.
The monies realised by these foreign bosses are often siphoned abroad and therefore there is little benefit to the country from these operations. More importantly these illegal enterprises hamper legitimate local licensed businesses run by the locals who have all the right to conduct business without being harassed by various elements running bootleg gigs.
Why are the authorities slow to crackdown on these illegal small-businesses run by foreigners?
One reason, say some of the locals affected by these operations, may be that the authorities have a false sense of fealty towards tourists.
Their rationalisation may be something on these lines: tourism is on the rise and tourists are helping revive the economy, so a few of them breaking the law should not bother us.
Such rationalisations are certainly contemptible and are probably excuses for some Law Enforcement officers who are probably bribed by the errant tourists. It’s upto the tourism authorities working together with local Law Enforcement to crackdown on these errant foreigners flouting their Visa conditions and making things difficult for locals at many levels. As stated, they cut into the legitimate business profits of domestic business operations, while they also undermine tourism because the locals who are generally hospitable to tourists begin harboring ill feelings towards all tourists because of the very few that flout the laws.
Besides that, Sri Lankans, though laboring under the weight of a slow and painful economic recovery, are not desperate. They are a relatively educated lot — even the small business owners in the tourism business — who are not about to be swamped by any type of nefarious activity that follows the current ‘gold rush’ in the form of revived tourism.
In other words, this is not some type of banana republic in which the locals get swamped by the gangsterism that reigns whenever there is some economic opportunity that draws all the flotsam and jetsam to one place, to try and make good while the boom lasts.
This is why inaction is particularly concerning when people expect to get on with their business activities unmolested.
LEGITIMATE
Added to this, is the attitude in some sections of society, that seem to want to work in cahoots with those who insist on carrying out obnoxious and sometimes palpably illegal acts that operate within a clearly discriminatory context.
The hangers-on who tried to confine a ‘all are welcome’ cricket match to whites only, essentially, at the Galle Literary Festival, and others of that ilk fall into this category.
They don’t have a place in a society that was never servile. Sri Lankans as a whole — though there were notable exceptions — were never servile when this country was forcibly colonized. Essentially they fought colonialism but succumbed due to superior firepower of the enemy.
Such people are not about to fold before a trend of soft-apartheid in a post-colonial context.
But certain unscrupulous subalterns among Sri Lankans may see profit in these new tendencies and try to turn a blind eye as tourist owned businesses run illegally at the expense of legitimate domestic small business owners.
These insidious subalterns have to be told where to get off. The law has to work, and if anyone is trying to sabotage that cause, that situation must be revisited in no uncertain terms.
Moreover, just because tourism is a godsend at this juncture, it doesn’t mean that nefarious activity coming in the guise of tourism should be condoned. People have enough discernment to know how to distinguish between lucrative tourism in the main, and the disruptive variety practiced in the periphery. The people depend on the authorities and Law Enforcement to bring the situation under control.
Rajpal Abeynayake