Safety alert for Lankan workers travelling to Gulf

The relevant authorities in Sri Lanka along with international bodies have reached an agreement to formulate standard service terms focusing on the safety of migrant domestic workers.

This was decided upon at the recently concluded Asia-Gulf states regional dialogue on ‘Standard terms of employment for migrant domestic workers’.

Six Asian states and six Gulf states along with the International Labour Organization (ILO), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UN Women Affairs participated in the forum.

Dr. Rebecca Tavares, Director, UN Women Affairs, said, "This is not a legally binding document but a model on how future service documents between receiving and sending countries should be formulated when it comes to migrant domestic workers."

The main conclusions of the dialogue were:

*National labour legislation should be in line with international labour laws.
*Contracts should be in a language that is understood by the worker
*The worker must be informed of what to do and whom to turn to in case of an emergency
*The worker must be made aware of the facilities available to him/her in the country of destination, especially when it comes to health and personal safety
* The employer must also agree to terminate the service contract after a maximum of two years if the employee wishes to leave his/her place of employment. In addition to this, the employee has the right to retain all his/her travel documents with him/her at all times.

Ramanadan Balakrishnan, Deputy Director at UN Women Affairs, added: "The most vulnerable group here are women migrant domestic workers and the object of this agreement is to make not only migration but the whole cycle of migration from recruitment to employment safe for women domestic workers."

Nishanka N. Wijeratne, Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs, said: "We are pleased to inform you that after many attempts to negotiate with the Government of Saudi Arabia, this forum has allowed us to convince the Minister to the Ministry of Labour in Saudi Arabia to sign a service agreement with Sri Lanka. The agreement will be signed by the end of January next year. The service agreement, which applies to all migrant workers to Saudi, will also have a clause for workers' rights based on the Standard Service Agreement we agreed on as a model."


 

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