Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka’s economy is being transformed through a rapid process of financialisation. Such widespread financialisation facilitated infrastructure development, a real estate boom linked to urbanisation and expansion of credit leading to increasing indebtedness of the (...)
Tomoya Obokata, the visiting UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, said he is alarmed about the micro-financing system in Sri Lanka, where many desperate women resort to sex work or demanding forms of labour, such as domestic work, which (...)
Reviving the pandemic-stricken country often seems like the job of those who have the ability to directly and considerably contribute to the national economy, and almost all programmes aimed at rebuilding the economy focus more on the economic aspects of this matter. But, whether economic (...)
The year of 1977 has become a highly charged symbol for understanding the current crisis. After the transition from a “closed” to an “open” economy, many now claim that Sri Lanka is moving backwards. But we must be clear on what is responsible for the ongoing breakdown. Over the decades since Sri (...)
The Stand Up Movement Lanka organisation has written to the European Union (EU), requesting that it intervene to ensure that the rights of workers in the Export Processing Zones (EPZs) are addressed prior to deciding on whether or not to extend the grant of the EU’s Generalised Scheme of (...)
Two questions were posed to me referring to the views expressed in my previous columns. A couple of weeks ago, commenting on the economic impasse in Sri Lanka, I wrote: “Sri Lanka needs a totally different perspective in order for it to come out of the extant impasse.
The novel perspective (...)
Among elite policy makers and experts, there is an unshakeable belief that going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will provide a pathway for Sri Lanka out of crisis. The IMF, however, applies its policy in a fragile global economy: one entirely different from the dawn of the neoliberal (...)
The Rs. 16,000 minimum monthly wage for the private sector, introduced to lessen the financial burden on private sector workers, has no real impact on their income levels, and making ends meet will continue to be a challenge, The Sunday Morning learnt.
Moreover, private sector and estate (...)
The Asia-Pacific region has been termed the ‘clothing factory of the world’ as it accounts for 60 percent of the world’s total apparel exports according to statistics compiled by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The garment sector in Sri Lanka is an important source of income and (...)
The Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees Union (FTZGSEU) has alleged that the negligence of the employers and the inaction of the Department of Labour has led to the large number of workers in the apparel sector contracting the Covid-19 virus during the current third wave.
“After the (...)
The exponential growth of the microfinance industry in Sri Lanka does not correspond with its contribution to reducing poverty. Instead, it has escalated indebtedness among women, pushed them below subsistence and made victims of both personal and structural violence. The Satyagraha which (...)
Key Demands to address the COVID-19 crisis in the Free Trade Zones
To the GoSL & Factory Owners/Employers; Prioritize ALL workers in the FTZ and apparel supply chain for COVID-19 vaccination, both in the western province and the rest of the country. This should include both regular (...)
The pandemic impacted salaries in dualistic ways last year, with real wages of formal private sector workers showing a reduction of 4.2% but in contrast nominal wages of public sector workers increased 9.2% and real wages 2.9% in 2020, the Central Bank said.
The Central Bank Annual Report (...)
Won’t allow country to become Chinese colony, says monk
Filing about a dozen petitions at Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court on Thursday, opposition parties, civil society groups, and labour unions challenged a recently-gazetted Bill on the Chinese-backed Port City in capital Colombo, arguing it (...)
The government is doing nothing to help the poor caught in a micro-credit trap, moderator of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR), Chinthaka Rajapakshe says.
Rajapakshe said that only the Parliamentary Committee on Gender Equality and some MPs, from both the government and (...)
“We work all day and night and still we do not earn the minimum wage. The moment COVID-19 started spreading, we became outcasts. We had no one to turn to. Neither the Government nor our employers helped us through the harsh circumstances because of the stigma that surrounded factory workers. We (...)
Thousands of innocent villagers, especially in the Northern, Eastern, and North Central Provinces are holding protests to raise a collective cry against the longstanding issues related to the microfinance debt trap that had claimed the lives of three women within the first three months of this (...)
Irrespective of the fairy anecdotes on the gospel sovereignty of microcredit programmes of denting poverty, there are growing doubts on sustaining their core – enhancing financial inclusion for the poor to find a way out from financial poverty.
From its authentic core to empower rural (...)
At the moment of writing this article, the farmer women who had formed an organisation called the Collective of Micro-Credit Victimised Rural Farmer Women have been engaged in a ‘satyagraha’ in Hingurakgoda against the micro credit institutions that have entrapped the village poor and the (...)
With the commencement of worldwide vaccination programmes, there is hope that the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic would soon become more manageable and less aggressive, even though the health organisations around the world have said that a complete return to normalcy would not be (...)
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