Labour and Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara

Labour and Foreign Employment Minister, Mr. Manusha Nanayakkara, on Saturday said that the Cabinet of Ministers has granted approval to digitize the entire foreign employment sector.

While noting this will be implemented at the earliest the Minister stressed that this will help liberate the foreign employment sector from the clutches of traffickers and fraudsters, will improve communications between migrant workers and authorities and will also improve grievance handling procedures.

The Minister said this while participating in a discussion with Journalists in the Matale district on the sidelines of the ‘Jayagamu Sri Lanka’ programme held in Matale.

Furthermore, the Minister emphasized that this initiative would empower the Foreign Employment Bureau to thwart unnecessary interference and combat illegal activities effectively.

When the sector is digitized it will encompass everything from the affairs at the embassy, to the recruitment of employees and the SLBFE. This system becomes more efficient. Along with that, every employee will have an ‘App’ on their phone. The embassy, the person concerned with our office in Colombo receives a message when a migrant worker is in distress. Accordingly, we have developed a system to contact the relevant person immediately. We will inform you about it in the future. When this system is established, a majority of problems in the sector can be solved” the Minister said.

Responding to questions from Journalists the Minister said under the laws stipulated in the current Act, the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment has no responsibility regarding sub-agents. 

Therefore, the SLBFE Act has been amended to deal with sub-agents and it is now in the final phase and with the Attorney General’s Department. It will soon go to Parliament. It contains that these sub-agents are regulated as limited to a licensed agency. But that agency has to be responsible for these sub-agents” he added.

The Minister said with the digitization process all these things will be changed and affairs related to the foreign employment sector will be streamlined and will be more transparent.