-By A Staff Writer
(Lanka-e-News -11.March.2025, 11.00 PM) In 2024, 65% of Sri Lankan migrant workers heading abroad were women bound for the Middle East. This is not economic progress—it is modern-day slavery disguised as employment. These women endure inhumane working conditions, abuse, and unfair wages, all while being trapped in a system that violates international labour laws and basic human dignity.
Sri Lankan women working as housemaids in the Middle East are often subjected to 16 to 20-hour workdays, seven days a week, for less than $100 a month. That’s not a wage—it’s a disgrace. They are expected to cook, clean, care for children, and tend to the elderly—all while being treated as property under the Kafala system, a restrictive sponsorship rule that gives their employers total control over their lives. Quitting is not an option, changing jobs is impossible, and escape often leads to imprisonment.
The result? Thousands of Sri Lankan women are physically and sexually abused, starved, beaten, and locked up by their employers. Many flee to the Sri Lankan embassies for refuge, where they are packed into tiny rooms by the hundreds, waiting for a way out. Some never return home alive.
Since 1979, over 31,961 cases of abuse, assault, and death of Sri Lankan women have been reported in Middle Eastern countries. How many were compensated? Zero. Sri Lanka could claim over $16 billion in damages for these violations, but not a single dollar has been paid. How much longer will we allow this to continue?
Yes, migrant labour brings in $1.1 billion in annual remittances, but at what cost? Broken families, abandoned children, and men struggling to hold households together. Sri Lanka spends billions on education, yet instead of creating jobs at home, we send our educated women abroad to scrub floors and suffer abuse for pennies. Is this the best we can do?
Other South Asian nations have banned sending housemaids to the Middle East. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have all set conditions to protect their workers. Why is Sri Lanka still selling its women for less than $100 a month?
We must make a choice:
Demand better wages and legal protections for our domestic workers—or
Stop sending them altogether.
If the Middle East refuses to treat Sri Lankan women with dignity, then Sri Lanka must refuse to send them. It is time to stop earning shameful money by exporting our women’s labour. We are not a nation of servants. We are a nation of educated, hardworking people—and it’s time we started acting like it.
-By A Staff Writer
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by (2025-03-11 18:59:29)
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