A total of 133 Sri Lankan construction workers are scheduled to leave for Israel on Wednesday, 23 September, the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) said, according to the Daily Mirror.
The departure follows an awareness programme and ticket distribution held at the SLBFE auditorium on 14 September, under the patronage of SLBFE Chairman Kosala Wickramasinghe. Air tickets went to 133 workers bound for the construction sector and 17 selected for infrastructure-sector jobs — 150 in total.
The programme was intended to give the workers information and guidance before departure.
Why this batch matters
This is the first Israel-bound batch in recent SLBFE announcements in which construction work is the whole story.
When the Bureau handed tickets to 204 workers four days later, on 18 September, the batch broke down as 144 restaurant, 43 hotel, 16 industrial and one agricultural placement. This site noted then that neither construction nor renovation appeared in that batch in any form — despite renovation trades accounting for 12,000 of the 16,000 places in the recruitment drive the Bureau opened on 10 August, against 4,000 restaurant places.
That gap now has at least a partial answer. A construction pipeline exists and is moving people.
One caution on reading the two together. The August drive advertised renovation trades — putty and gypsum work, sunk box and block stone construction, plastering and ceramic tiling. The Daily Mirror describes this batch as construction and infrastructure. Those labels overlap but are not obviously identical, and the report does not say which recruitment phase these 150 workers were selected under. They should not be assumed to be the August cohort.
A sequencing oddity
The two events sit awkwardly in time. Tickets for this batch were distributed on 14 September; tickets for the larger 204-worker batch went out on 18 September. The earlier group departs on 23 September. The Daily Mirror gives no departure date for the 204.
The chairman’s name, again
The Daily Mirror spells the chairman “Kosala Wickramasinghe.” Other outlets and this site’s earlier coverage of the Israel corridor use “Koshala Wickramasinghe.” Same person; the spelling remains unsettled across Sri Lankan newsrooms.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not give contract lengths, wages or the employers involved, does not name the airline or route, and does not say whether the 17 infrastructure workers travel on the same day.
It does not say how many of the 16,000 places advertised in August have now been filled, nor how many Sri Lankans are currently working in Israel’s construction sector as opposed to how many have departed for it.
No comment from the Israeli side is reported, and there is no indication whether the regional security situation has affected placement volumes or departure scheduling.
