By Patali Champika Ranawaka

The fate of Rizana Nazeek, languishing in a prison of Saudi Arabia, made headline news during the past few weeks.

Based on optimistic utterances of certain ministers, organizations and news reports, I was of the view that Rizana would be freed without being paid any blood money to relevant parties. Minister of Eastern Province and the Deputy leader of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Nazeer Ahamad who was instrumental in building the SLMC headquarters with generous donations provided by Saudi government was one of those who had expressed optimism about Rizana’s release.

However, disappointing everybody, bad news of Rizana being beheaded came in when I was in the Parliament. Saddened by the fate of Rizana, the proceedings of the Parliament were interrupted to observe a few minutes silence in her memory.

The CNN of the United States released Rizana’s beheading as its main story of the day. It also carried a news item of another Indonesian woman having the same fate, but being released later by paying US $ 500,000 as blood money. However, Rizana was unfortunate, for not having given even that option.

Dismayed by the sequence of events, two other similar incidents in the past came to my mind. The first took place in a girls’ school in Saudi Arabia when it was on fire in July 2002. There, in spite of shouting for help, 15 school- girls were allowed to burn to death as the Saudi religious police was prohibited to touch the helpless girls. It was later reported that the journalist of AL NADAVA newspaper was jailed for having deplored this inhuman ordeal. Fortunately, everybody knows that poor Rizana’s Sri Lanka is not that type of a country.

The second was the recent Malala shooting incident that took place in Pakistan. Two Islamic extremists attempted on her life for the simple reason that she was posting a Facebook comment dedicated for education rights of women. Quite contrary to these incidents, Rizana’s Muslim society in Sri Lanka took pride in a Muslim girl recently securing island best results in a public competitive examination. Under these circumstances, it is worth probing what and where Rizana had gone wrong. Was it due to her poverty? Was our society at fault? Was it our government’s negligence? Was it punishment meted out to her by Islamic Sharia law? Or was it the will of almighty God?

According to available data, out of 3 million (15% of Sri Lankan population) Sri Lankan expatriates in many parts of the world, 1.8 million are categorized as migrated workers. Every year, 250 to 300 thousand Sri Lankans migrated seeking employment opportunities. In 2011, this figure was 262,460 and during 2012, it was 276,750. If we categorize these migrated people (2011), in accordance with relevant percentages, it reads as, professionals (1.5%), technical grades (2.3%), clerks and middle level workers (3.8%), skilled workers (25.7%) and unskilled workers including housemaids (66.6%). Over 80 percent of Sri Lankan workforce is heading towards Middle East of which Saudi Arabia sharing the largest chunk (26%), followed by Qatar (20%), Kuwait (19%) UAE (16%). It is interesting to note that over 500,000 workers are in Saudi Arabia alone.

Foreign employment remittance has become the largest foreign earnings of the country and for this reason all those who contribute to it are called ‘Rata Viruvo’ or migrant heroes. In 2012, our total exports were around 10 billion US dollars, comprising tea, rubber, coconut, apparel, spice and other goods and services. The foreign remittance alone had been over 6 billion US dollars without which the rupee would have been devalued further (During 2012, it was devalued by 20%, causing serious problems to our economy) and necessitating foreign loans to fill the gap. (The treasury sought one billion US dollar IMF facility to bridge the gap of the current account deficit, recently.)

On the other hand, 45 percent of the foreign employment figure has been housemaids and they contribute 50 percent of foreign remittance. This means that each of them sends 3,000 US dollars per annum as average remittance. It in turn is an amount now equivalent to the per capita income of Sri Lanka which can be earned in their own country. The other significant factor is that Sri Lankan professionals and permanent resident holders in foreign countries do not contribute comparatively much to our foreign remittances as they buy and invest money in many other places. Today, Sri Lanka is experiencing a severe shortage of labor and as a result, investors are somewhat hesitant to initiate their business activities here due to comparatively heavy wage demand. Therefore, it has now become a trend for the Indians to come here on our tourist visa facilities to fill the shortfall of labor requirement. It has been observed that when about 200,000 Sri Lankans go abroad for unskilled labor jobs, an equal number of Indians come here to earn almost the same amount of hard money! Although we have reached one million tourist arrival target, we are the least per capita gained country in tourism industry. (It is six times less when compared to that of Maldives).

The other important feature in this regard is its composition of women. Although some time back 60 percent of total migrant workers had been women, it has now come down to 48 percent. Only 55 percent of these workers are channeled through employment agencies while others are subjected to their own risks. According to a recent survey, over 55 percent families of which mothers were abroad on employment have been confronted with immense social problems at home while over 30 percent of them have experienced harassment, cheating at the hands of their foreign employers and even deportation after a few months of work. It also has been noted that there had been instances of some of these workers having converted themselves to Islam, merely to avoid harassment being inflicted on them. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, a single such complaint from 57,810 non-Muslim Islamic population in Sri Lanka have not been reported.

In this regard, it is high time Sri Lanka followed the steps taken by India and Bangladesh to ban sending women as unskilled workers to foreign countries in view of the perceived economic and social losses to the home country. However, it should be done setting a transition period (say 5 years), within which time new laws be put in place for employment agencies such as making it mandatory to conduct orientation programs for the prospective workers to acquire basic knowledge on using household modern equipment, Arabic language, cultural habits, Sharia and prevailing laws of their foreign employers. Also, the government should be geared to take unwavering action in implementing international labor laws as and when required.

Under prevailing circumstances, no point in taking exception to Saudi Arabian government’s adherence to its Sharia laws. Therefore, all what we should do in this regard is to prevent extremist forces trying to implement these laws in countries of free minded people. At the same time, we should take concerted efforts to uplift the economic and social standards of our rural and urban poor women. It also has to be remembered that most of these workers are induced to migrate due to social reasons than to that of poverty.

There had been a period; even South Korea was going through such a predicament. When the president of South Korea Park Hee (1962-78) was on a tour of Germany, he was shocked to see the tragedy of his migrated countrymen languishing in German coal mines and factories. Having seen the plight of those Koreans, he was determined to uplift their livelihood and as a result, Korea now attracts thousands of workers from other countries. Even China, India and some other countries allow their people to migrate for the progress of their own countries. We should learn a lesson from these countries. That is the rich lesson, poor Rizana wanted us to learn!COURTESY:THE NATION