{"id":58268,"date":"2016-09-02T02:33:29","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T09:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=58268"},"modified":"2016-09-02T02:33:29","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T09:33:29","slug":"indian-invasion-and-colonization-of-sri-lanka-a-concern-for-all-sri-lankans-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/09\/02\/indian-invasion-and-colonization-of-sri-lanka-a-concern-for-all-sri-lankans-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian invasion and colonization of Sri Lanka – A concern for all Sri Lankans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mahinda Gunasekera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

My understanding is that the Hon. Prime Minister has said that he intends to sign the ETCA deal with India before the end of 2016, and has not said anything about negotiations nor has he been open to consultations with professionals and trade categories that will be affected by his intention to open the IT sector and other professionals and trades people in the Ports sector. The PM first announced his intention to sign the deal, the details of which are not known on a visit to India, and has not been open about it. The IT professionals and other professionals in the IT, Engineering, Medical, Architectural fields, etc. have been asking the authorities to first regularize Sri Lanka’s professional and trades sectors by bringing in legislation for accreditation and licensing purposes before opening these sectors to foreign personnel to enter Sri Lanka’s job market, which is a very fair demand. Then they will have a yard stick by which to assess the qualifications of foreigners who seek to work in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 They have also pointed out, that in the event it is deemed that Sri Lanka is going to have a shortfall of qualified personnel in these sectors, measures should be taken to firstly train more persons in such fields.<\/p>\n

As regards the so called Free Trade Deal with India, after nearly 15 years of operation, India has been able to expand her exports to Sri Lanka exponentially while Sri Lankan exports face numerous obstacles from India’s Union States which have other rules operating in their respective states that override terms entered into with the Centre, making it a difficult and costly task to obtain clearance for SL exports which are held in the sea ports of the Union States. The only product which Sri Lanka has been able to sell more is ‘Karunka’ (arecanut) which is imported from other Asian countries and value added by removal of the skins before export to Sri Lanka, while other products are subject to quotas and varying rules and duties imposed by the different Union States.<\/p>\n

No steps appear to have been taken to iron these problems all this time, but the SL government wants to expand the scope and also sign an economic and technological cooperation agreement (ETCA) with India when the trade deal is working unfavourably to Sri Lanka. In order to maintain good relations with our neighbours, we do not have to undersell ourselves and open the flood gates for below average personnel, as those with better qualifications will seek employment in the developed west instead of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mahinda Gunasekera My understanding is that the Hon. Prime Minister has said that he intends to sign the ETCA deal with India before the end of 2016, and has not said anything about negotiations nor has he been open to consultations with professionals and trade categories that will be affected by his intention to open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58268","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=58268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}