US $ 5.98 billion from Sri Lankan Middle East workers in 2012

Sri Lanka received US $ 5.98 billion by way of remittances in 2012 as the number one foreign exchange earner, latest Central Bank Annual Report showed. The  number of women departed seeking to be employed as housemaids  in the Middle Eastern countries increased by 10,735 to 118,235 in 2012. Being the largest manpower category headed off for foreign employment in 2012, housemaids account for 42.3 percent of the total departures, up from 40.9 percent in 2011. The total number of departures for foreign employment rose by 6.3 percent year-on-year to 279,482 in 2012. Apart from the housemaid category, increases were also seen in clerical and related fields, middle level and professional categories.

 Both women and men work so hard to Sri Lanka to be a number one foreign exchange earner     

According to the Central Bank Annual Report, the Middle Eastern countries continued to be the major market for Sri Lankan labour in 2012. Departures to these countries accounted for 94.4 percent of the total migrants in 2012, which mainly consisted of housemaids.  Four Middle Eastern countries, namely, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE together accounted for 84.3 percent of total migrant workers in 2012, compared with 80.3 percent in 2011. The departures to Saudi Arabia amounted to 97,398, an increase of 42.1 per cent over the previous year. However, departures to the rest of the countries recorded a decrease, leading to a decline in the relative share of total migrants to these countries to 15.7 per cent in 2012 from 19.7 per cent in the previous year, reflecting the continued high dependence on the Middle Eastern countries for foreign employment.

 According to the Central Bank interim report, with departures for work increasing 7.7% to 136,245 in the first half of the year, compared to the same time period in 2011. And the number of housemaids seeking work continued to increase as well. The total amount of foreign remittances increased to USD 3907 million from January to August- an over 15% increase.  Following the recent brutal beheading of Sri Lankan housemaid Rizanna Nafeek, various pressure groups have called to end the practice of sending Sri Lankan women to the Middle Eastern countries as domestics. In response, the government said they will be gradually phasing out the practice but urged that they cannot stop it overnight.

However, the Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare  is trying to discourage females from migrating to the Middle East by placing an age limit. A recent cabinet decision had been taken to increase the age limit of sending women overseas to 25 years for Saudi Arabia, and 23 years for most other Middle Eastern countries, except for Israel (21 years). The hope is that these 18-year-old girls will then be encouraged to go into vocational training, so that they can enter jobs, which would be considered acceptable to society, seeing as the prevailing social dialogue was against women being sent to the Middle East to work as housemaids.