With the Chinese-funded Colombo Port City project and the ambitious “Megapolis” project likely to get off the ground soon, and given the acute shortage of skilled and unskilled manpower at home, Sri Lanka may have to import 100,000 itinerant foreign workers, asserts Dr. Surath Wickramasinghe, President, Chamber of Construction Industry (CCI).
“At the rate of 400-500 workers per big project like the construction of a large hotel of international standard, we may need 100,000 foreign workers in the next ten years,” Wickramasinghe told Express on Tuesday.
Potential foreign investors (like the Mahindras of India) have complained that Lanka does not have enough trained manpower to take on jobs in modern industries. Lanka does export more than a million workers, principally to West Asia, but these are more mostly domestic maids or unskilled or semi-skilled workmen. Even the hotel, tourist and hospitality sectors, major foreign exchange earners for the island nation, are short of trained people though Lankans are naturally suited to be in the hospitality sector.
According to Kishore Reddy, Managing Director Platinum Realty Investments, there is a tremendous shortage of unskilled manpower too.
“With a high literacy rate, few young Lankans want to do manual work. Furthermore, with the large number of infrastructure projects which were initiated after the war, skilled and unskilled locals found work creating a shortage in the expanding construction industry. The cost of labor in Lanka is also high,” Reddy noted.
Wickramasinghe said that at least Foreign Direct Investors, registered under the Board of Investment (BOI), should be allowed to recruit workers from wherever they want. But they should be made to give an undertaking that these workers will be sent back on completion of the projects.
“The government should put in a place a system to ensure that foreign workers return home after finishing their projects,” he added.
The fear that foreigners, especially Indians, will stay on, merge with the local population and take up local jobs at lower wages, torments Lankans.
Asked if there will be local resistance to the entry of foreign workers, Wickramasinghe said that there will be no resistance if there are safeguards against over-staying beyond the written contract period. Moreover, the construction industry as such (of which he is the leader) knows that it desperately needs more workers on a significant scale.
Addressing the apprehension that most migrant workers will be from over-populated neighboring India, Wickramasinghe said that they could come from any country, “even Myanmar and Bangladesh.”
In Reddy’s view, the recruitment of foreign workers, especially unskilled manual workers, will allow local educated youth to go for higher levels of white collar technical and managerial jobs and earn more, either within Lanka or abroad.
“This way, Lanka will be using its higher literacy rate and overall educational levels more gainfully,” Reddy said, Express reports.
-Agencies
