{"id":103836,"date":"2020-06-23T02:57:46","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T09:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=103836"},"modified":"2020-06-23T02:57:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T09:57:46","slug":"exodus-of-sri-lankan-employees-back-to-homeland-from-overseas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/06\/23\/exodus-of-sri-lankan-employees-back-to-homeland-from-overseas\/","title":{"rendered":"EXODUS OF SRI LANKAN EMPLOYEES BACK TO HOMELAND FROM OVERSEAS"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

When\nwe were studying Demography at the university, a popular topic was Brain Drain,\nand we were not happy about the population policy planning at that time as the\ngovernment policy did not direct and address required policy measures to\ncontrol brain drain.  The major reason to\ndisplease the government policy was that competent human resources were subject\nto leave from the country looking for higher earnings from overseas. Later,\nsince the 1980s the government has been encouraging to send skilled people\noverseas for employment as such policy has been contributed to increasing\nforeign exchange inflow, reduce unemployment, and empowering rural people. Many\nrural women left overseas for a small wage that was a large amount when\nconverted to Sri Lanka rupees in a situation where the monetary unit of the\ncountry has been radically depreciating. Going overseas for employment has\nbecome a fashion as it becomes a way to make quick money disregarding the\ndignity of labour and the war and terrorist activities too in the country\npromoted going overseas and it has come to young people\u2019s minds that the\npurpose of education is to go overseas for employment than it is using for the\ncountry where they were born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People\ngoing overseas for employment is a common facet in all countries in the world.\nPeople in developed countries have gone overseas for employment, the purpose of\nleaving from the native place is a preference of individuals who prefer a\ndifferent environment to gain experience, and some low-income countries\nencourage citizens to go overseas for employment for specific economic\nreasons.  Sri Lanka followed similar\nreasons in the past. In the beginning, many people go overseas with a strong\nmind comeback after a few years with a wheelbarrow of money and some people go\nwith the family, and when the family adapts to the overseas environment they\nhave no idea of going back to the homeland, and some people begin doing\nbusiness. Many employees who have gone oversea from Sri Lanka were semi-skilled\nor unskilled labour who have difficulties in finding employment with sufficient\nwages for living, and hyperinflation created in the country after the 1978\nliberal economic policy forced people to look for jobs overseas.  Many people who have gone overseas are\nperforming unskilled and lower grade work, and some of them addicted to\nanti-social behaviour.        <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nthe world is getting hardships from the COVID pandemic it seems that Sri Lankan\nemployees in many countries especially in the Middle East want to come back and\nwhen they come back, they become unemployed in the country. Sri Lanka needs to\ndevelop new policies to treat employees coming from overseas. Two major issues\nwith those who are coming from overseas are first finding employment, and the\nsecond is earning in Sri Lanka isn\u2019t adequate to satisfy the lifestyle they adapted\nin overseas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngovernment could develop short-term and medium-term policies to solve the\nproblem.  It can assume that 25% of\nexodus employees from overseas can quickly train to go overseas again if they\nare quality workers and qualified personnel, however, domestic workers in\nMiddle East houses will have to compete with people from other countries. The\nCOVID pandemic has created job losses in many countries. Last week it reported\nthat unemployment in Australia 7.1% of the laborforce and economists predict\nthat it will be double in the next month. \nIf it assesses from the 1990s economic downturn it would take more than\ntwo years to recover.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfollowing policy actions would be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Retraining people in TVET\ninstitutions for the same job area or shift into other fields. Each electorate\nneeds two TVET institutions with ten skill training courses from Certificate 1\nto Diploma level.  TVET institutions need\nto develop short programs and curriculum for programs. TVET programs need to\nstructured consistent international standards ( Certificate 1, Certificate 2,\nCertificate 3, Certificate 4, Diploma, and National Advanced Diploma). Changes\nin the curriculum are essential to the modern environment and the curriculum\nstructure in the TVET system in Sri Lanka has not been changed consistently to\nthe modernization of skills and knowledge level.  They need skills to apply values in the work\nenvironment.  The application of values\nin the work environment is far behind and kids are needed to give skills to\nbecome competent employees.<\/li>
  • Under the education\nreforms, if the government introduced Vocational Education in Secondary\ncontexts, many of these returnees can appoint as TVET teachers in secondary\nschools with a one-year teacher training program. (If the government interested\nin such a program, I can provide the program and curriculum in English).  TVET training should offer in English with\npromoting languages such as Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, German, and others.<\/li>
  • Interested people could\nbe given training for initiating a small business.  Entrepreneurial skills should be promoted\nwith broader skills in accounting, business strategies, marketing, and many\nother areas to initiate many businesses and each business can provide jobs for\nat least five persons.  This strategy\nwould be helpful to reduce unemployment in the country.<\/li>
  • The banking system needs\nto introduce a credit project to help these returnees with credits and other\nfinancial help.  Many people in Sri Lanka\nare lacking knowledge in developing projects, monitoring projects, and remedial\nmanagement.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    People\nhave been working overseas need broader skills to adapt to the environment of\nSri Lanka, during the past several decades, the work environment in the country\nhas changed and the behaviour of people also changed, sometimes people come\nback to the country they might have difficulties to deal with people in the\ncountry who have adapted to the strange culture. I observed that Sinhala\nlanguage has changed and many words added to usage and modern Sinhala usage is\ndifficult to understand.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS When we were studying Demography at the university, a popular topic was Brain Drain, and we were not happy about the population policy planning at that time as the government policy did not direct and address required policy measures to control brain drain.  The major reason to displease the government policy was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}