Sri Lanka's Remittance Economy by Matt Withers

Author:Matt Withers [Withers, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Emigration & Immigration, Developing & Emerging Countries, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429843051
Google: 7OuYDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-16T04:13:08+00:00

Regulation and representation

Policy responses

The actions of unauthorised sub-agents have been widely condemned, both by international organisations such as the ILO (2013) and Human Rights Watch (2007), and by vested government and industry bodies such as the SLBFE and the Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agents (ALFEA). The call for greater regulation has been unanimous; even ALFEA, which represents the interests of licensed recruitment agencies, has been outspoken in its concern for the impact of sub-agent malpractice on the wider industry.

Interviewed in an English-language weekend newspaper, The Sunday Times, ALFEA president Faizar Mackeen spoke out against sub-agents and the absence of an effective regulatory response:

This is not good for business, it is also dangerous since there is no accountability should something go wrong at either end because these people are not registered and would be hard to trace in an eventuality. Not only that, many of those involved in such rackets are rogue sub-agents operating in various parts of the country and the authorities have done very little to rope them in.… If this is allowed to continue foreign principals would look elsewhere for future recruitment and we may lose out in the market.

(Berenger 2012)

Despite expressing concerns that are chiefly a reflection of self-interest, specifically that foreign demand for Sri Lankan workers could decline on account of malpractice, there appears to be a consensus between business and civil society that the government needs to tightly regulate sub-agent activity. Yet there has been little by way of official policy response, despite pressure from the Colombo Process3 to tighten regulations (Agunias, Aghazarm, and Battistella 2011) and Sri Lanka’s official migration policy acknowledging the severity of the issue and the responsibility of the government in resolving it:

Malpractices by private recruitment agencies and the gaps in the regulatory framework for local agents of recruiting agencies (known as sub-agents) lead to exploitative and abusive situations for migrant workers.… The State has the final responsibility in all recruitment processes, derived from its commitment to protecting workers within a secure and equitable labour migration process.

(MFEPW 2008, 10–11)

When interviewed, a general manager for the SLBFE explained that a new regulatory framework redressing gaps within the existing legislation was soon to be put before parliament:

[The existing legislation] was enacted in 1985. We did certain amendments from time to time, but still it had a lot of loopholes. It clearly mentioned the role of the recruitment agents and the bureau, but the sub-agent is in-between – he is not recognised and he is not legalised.… Ultimately what we decided was to introduce a new system, we proposed a new act that is called Sri Lanka Migration Employment Authority Act that is now put to the parliament and the parliamentary commission is looking after that and I think most probably before the end of this year come it will come into practice. It will definitely identify the role of the sub-agent. What are their limits? How they can do it? Everything is covered. Whatever the problems we had for the last 20 years is covered by that particular act.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.