{"id":79673,"date":"2018-07-28T21:06:20","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T03:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=79673"},"modified":"2018-07-27T15:19:58","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T22:19:58","slug":"where-the-flight-ends-and-the-plight-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/07\/28\/where-the-flight-ends-and-the-plight-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the flight ends and the plight begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The recent photo of a group of female Sri Lankan to-be-domestic aides on their way to the arid Middle East made me very sad and even brought tears to my eyes. Dressed in kind of a uniform, they were walking in single file towards the exit and then onwards to the great unknown that lies beyond.<\/p>\n

The uniforms were supposedly for the benefit of the agent at the other end, making the identification easy for him. So that he can be sure that these veritable \u2018lambs to the slaughter\u2019 are indeed his flock and no one else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

There were quite a few posts on virtually all forms of media condemning the uniform as a silent whisper, yet roaring in public to say that here are the daughters of Lanka on their way to meet their foreign masters and that all under the sun could hear it and see them too, very well!<\/p>\n

We all know that the Sri Lankans working overseas play a leading role in bringing\u00a0hard currency to the country and amongst them, those, who are working in the Middle East as domestic helpers constitute an appreciable fraction. That\u2019s what all those figures in statistical tables say.<\/p>\n

So far so good as far as those figures go, which they often do anyway, whilst hiding the hideous and the horror that lay behind them. Have we ever cared as to what lies behind those numbers? Have our authorities ever noticed or wondered?<\/p>\n

We all know how male-dominant these countries are and the nature of the mindset that they have acquired as a result, towards their own women. I don\u2019t think anyone needs to be told as to how they would look at and treat these hapless foreign women.<\/p>\n

Sometimes getting battered and bruised, often sweared-at by their masters, our mothers, sisters and daughters spend years slaving away in those homes, breaking their backs whilst, constantly at the risk and under the threat of getting abused, both physically and mentally.<\/p>\n

Some of them pay the price in the form of irreparable trauma done to their dignity, sanity, and soul. Few of them have paid the ultimate price, for listening to and believing in the grandiose sermons of their agents, a grotesque, macabre reward to the innocent and the gullible for doing so.<\/p>\n

In Saudi Arabia, one of the prime locations of our female domestic-aid workforce, Sri Lanka is said to be called the \u2018country of housemaids\u2019. Can any country be proud of this, let alone one with a civilization dating back to or even further than two and a half millennia?<\/p>\n

We are still not even halfway as far as this bitter tale goes. Back at home and in some families (no statistics available as far as I know, yet numbers wouldn\u2019t be insignificant or small) of those working mothers, another drama unfolds.<\/p>\n

Some unscrupulous husbands now feeling freer and lighter than kites floating in the skies above our Galle Face greens, relieved of work to meet their families\u2019 needs and looking after the responsibilities, suddenly become adventurous and curious going well past the average. They begin to dance, gallop and gallivant in ecstasy, immerse themselves in pleasures of intoxication, forbidden flesh and gambling.<\/p>\n

And the children are often left to their own devices, mostly being looked after by the grandparents or other siblings of the mother.<\/p>\n

There are a few other; the dirty, the obscene and the ugly, which many a concerned writer has pointed out before me and I don\u2019t think they need any further mention or reference.<\/p>\n

I am sure we keep records of relevant data relating to all juvenile delinquents\/young offenders spending their time in rehabilitation centres and open prison camps. Has any authority tried to delve into those data and made attempts to establish whether there is any relationship between the \u2018instances of a mother-working overseas in this particular capacity or one related to it, and the incidents of juvenile delinquency\u2019? And how many incidents are left unreported, anyway? I am sure that there is a lot more of them, which do not come in the limelight.<\/p>\n

Now where is the solution? We cannot stop people from going overseas to work. But we can make them pause, think and stop. What if?<\/p>\n

And the authorities, the biggest villain in this tragic drama should take immediate steps to investigate, study and begin necessary actions to establish a benchmark income level, which is on par with the current standard of living in the country and ensure that the relevant stratum of the populace is lifted above that mark.<\/p>\n

In short, this is poverty alleviation. In fact it is \u2018accelerated poverty alleviation\u2019, which is not impossible, if the will is there.<\/p>\n

\u2018Stop being spendthrift by dipping into our starving coffers. Stop playing with the country\u2019s well-being and welfare. Get off your high horse. Cut off your excesses and pleasures, which are obscene, wicked demonstrations that smack of abuse of power.<\/p>\n

Stop your name-building\u00a0and spreading your fame at any cost or aiming for self-glorification while, pouring monies into bottomless pits (with highly disproportionate returns in comparison) that one day will be asking you in no uncertain terms to return the favours granted that cannot be met unless we sell more and more of the country while, caught in a vicious cycle of debt.<\/p>\n

Instead, concentrate on efficacy, efficiency and productivity. Give a thunderous lion\u2019s roar as one, so that we all could hear it; no to corruption, no matter how big or small it is and leave aside your petty, party, paltry politics, for the greater good of the nation\u2019.<\/p>\n

We should start doing something about it from right now with the top leading the way by example.<\/p>\n

If we do this, the day won\u2019t be too far away, when the end of that \u2018flight would not become\u00a0the beginning of a plight for some, any more\u2019.<\/p>\n

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

Laksiri Warnakula The recent photo of a group of female Sri Lankan to-be-domestic aides on their way to the arid Middle East made me very sad and even brought tears to my eyes. Dressed in kind of a uniform, they were walking in single file towards the exit and then onwards to the great unknown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79673","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=79673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}