Sri Lanka has identified extending social security and labour protection to platform workers, reviewing its labour and regulatory frameworks, and building better evidence on platform work as its priorities for the sector, following the adoption of the first international labour standard governing the platform economy.
The priorities were set at a national workshop held in Colombo on 13 October, organised by the International Labour Organization with the Ministry of Labour and the Department of Labour, the ILO said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The findings are expected to feed into further national dialogue and into Sri Lanka’s ongoing labour law reform process.
The standard this follows exists now
The workshop was convened in response to the adoption of the ILO’s Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention, 2026 (No. 193) — the first international labour standard written specifically for platform work.
That is a material change since this desk last reported on the Convention in June, when it was still a draft entering a second and near-final discussion at the 114th Session of the International Labour Conference in Geneva. It has since been adopted and numbered.
Participants examined the scope and provisions of Convention No. 193 and considered its relevance to Sri Lankan conditions. The ILO statement does not say whether Sri Lanka intends to ratify it.
Who was in the room
The workshop brought together government, employers’ and workers’ organisations, digital labour platforms, platform workers’ organisations and academics — a tripartite-plus format that put the platforms and the riders in the same discussion.
Opening it, H.M.D.N.K. Wataliyadda, Commissioner General of Labour, said labour policies and institutions needed to respond to changing forms of work while balancing worker protection against flexibility, innovation, sustainable enterprises and economic opportunity.
Joni Simpson, Director of the ILO Country Office for Sri Lanka and the Maldives, stressed the role of social dialogue.
“Digital labour platforms are opening new opportunities for workers and businesses in Sri Lanka, but innovation must go hand in hand with decent work. Through social dialogue, Sri Lanka has an opportunity to shape a platform economy that supports sustainable enterprises while ensuring fairness, protection and dignity for workers.”
The five priority areas
The areas identified for future action were:
- Strengthening data and evidence on platform work in Sri Lanka
- Reviewing existing labour and regulatory frameworks, including questions of employment status
- Exploring options to extend social security and labour protection
- Addressing working conditions — occupational safety and health, remuneration, data protection and access to grievance mechanisms
- Strengthening tripartite dialogue and institutional coordination
The discussions also covered algorithmic management, automated systems and account deactivation — the practice by which a platform can cut off a worker’s access to work without a process the worker can contest.
Why employment status is the load-bearing question
Platform-mediated work is expanding in Sri Lanka, the ILO notes, particularly in ride-hailing, delivery and online freelancing.
Employment status sits first among the regulatory questions because almost everything else follows from it. A worker classified as an independent contractor falls outside the statutory protections that attach to employment — hours, safety obligations, social security contributions and dismissal process. That classification is why the other four priorities are framed as things to be extended to platform workers rather than enforced on their behalf.
The scale of the gap was set out in June by the Centre for a Smart Future, which found that 75% of the gig workers it interviewed worked on platforms full-time, and cited a Solidarity Centre survey in which nearly all of 100 workers surveyed worked more than 11 hours a day and over a third more than 16. Sri Lanka’s Factories Ordinance caps factory work at 48 hours a week; at least one major platform imposes no daily limit at all.
Informal employment already accounts for a majority of total employment in Sri Lanka, so platforms have grown inside a labour market with weak baseline protection rather than displacing a strongly protected one.
Not reported
The ILO statement gives no timetable for the labour law reform process, does not say when or whether Sri Lanka will consider ratifying Convention No. 193, and names no platform companies or worker organisations that attended. It gives no figure for how many people work on platforms in Sri Lanka, reports no commitments or decisions taken at the workshop, and does not say what happens to the five priority areas next or which body owns them.
A note on sourcing. This report rests on the ILO’s own statement, a primary source, and on Mirage News, which republished it verbatim. Neither is a verified newsroom under this desk’s credibility index, so the article carries no corroboration badge. Ada Derana also carried the ILO statement, but its site has been unreachable from this desk’s infrastructure for 32 consecutive days under a CloudFront block, so no publish date could be extracted and it is not cited as a source. No other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had filed on the workshop at the time of writing — a week after it was held.
