President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has told officials that all government assistance due to Sri Lankan migrant workers must be provided “without hesitation or obstruction”, in a directive issued at a meeting with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.
The President made the remarks at the Presidential Secretariat on Wednesday afternoon, 28 October, the government news portal News.lk reported. He framed the instruction around the workers’ economic contribution: they earn much-needed foreign exchange for the country, and the assistance owed to them should not be held up.
What the meeting covered
The discussion focused on the implementation and progress of the welfare programmes the Bureau currently runs for Sri Lankans working overseas. Attention was given to problems encountered in delivering three of them:
- housing schemes
- loan facilities
- duty-free concessions
The framing is worth reading carefully. The meeting was not told that these programmes do not exist — it was told that workers are running into difficulty accessing programmes that do. That is what makes the directive an instruction to officials rather than an announcement of new benefits: nothing in either account creates a new entitlement, raises a payment or allocates money.
The database
The President also said an accurate and up-to-date database of Sri Lankans working overseas needs to be maintained, which would let welfare programmes be implemented more systematically and efficiently.
That is the one item in the meeting that identifies a cause rather than a symptom. Welfare delivery that depends on knowing who is abroad, where, and under what employment terms cannot be systematic if the underlying record is incomplete.
Who attended
- Vijitha Herath — Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism
- Dr Anil Jayantha Fernando — Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning
- Roshan Gamage — Senior Additional Secretary to the President
- Aruni Ranaraja — Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism
- Kosala Wickramasinghe — Chairman, Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment
On sourcing
Both sources carry the same account, and they are not independent of one another. Colombo Gazette’s version, published on 29 October, attributes the account to the President’s Media Division; News.lk is the government’s own news portal. The two are the same statement in two places, not two newsrooms reporting independently.
The dates differ for the same reason. News.lk dates the meeting to the afternoon of 28 October; Colombo Gazette carries no date for the meeting at all and was published a day later. This desk has taken the meeting date from the government account, which was first and is specific.
Context
The Bureau has been in the news this week for a different reason: this desk reported on 29 October on an SMS scam targeting candidates for the Korean language test, a route into overseas employment the SLBFE administers.
Not reported
Neither account says what the administrative obstacles actually are, who or what is causing the delays, or how many workers have been affected. Neither gives the number of applications pending for housing or loan assistance, the value of benefits undelivered, or any deadline for officials to act on the instruction.
Neither says whether a migrant worker database already exists and is deficient, or whether one must be built from scratch, and neither gives a timeframe, budget or responsible agency for it. Neither reports how many Sri Lankans are currently working abroad, and neither carries any response from the Bureau or an account of what officials told the President about the causes of the delays.