Tuesday, 16 July 2013 01:00
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In addition to de Silva and Arunatilake, the panel discussion that followed the presentations consisted of ILO Country Director Donglin Li, Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka Past President Anura Lokuhetty and Consultant Dr. Ramani Gunatilaka, and was moderated by Employers Federation of Ceylon Director General Ravi Peiris.
Q: One of the matters that came to light was the demographic bonus that we have right now and one of the impediments has been the low female participation rate in Sri Lanka. What are the policy recommendations that you would propose?
Gunatilaka: Transport, safety and law and order encourages women to engage in the labour force. There is also gender based discrimination – men have a greater chance of getting a good job so they are discouraged by this as well. The issue of providing day-care facilities has been mentioned but I don’t know to what extent that will be enough. Better educated professional women in rural area are looking for these options but culturally, Sri Lankan women don’t seem to want to do that. Go for transport first and then fix the other issues.
Q: There are quite a number of qualified employable females who drop out when they start families. What changes can be made for them to get back into the work environment?
Gunatilaka: I think the lack of part-time working opportunities is a real problem. A bank employee he said that they had a real problem opening branches out of urban areas because they couldn’t get tellers. When I asked him why they don’t employ women, he said that they don’t like to travel and don’t like to work part time but I think women would like to work part time, even if it is a mundane job but generally, you see that it is men who are in management and they take decisions and don’t push the employment of women for part time jobs.
Q: What is the ILO’s stand on the challenges posed by the demographic changes in Sri Lanka?
Li: I can see that Sri Lanka as a country can reap the demographic benefit over the next couple of years. The question is how can you make use of the demographic dividend? There is also the problem of employment while facing a youth employment crisis. The global unemployment rate is 6%, and in Sri Lanka it is only 3.9%. However, the youth unemployment is 17.4%. How can you use this youth potential to tackle the problem?
Next year, Sri Lanka will host the World Youth Conference. 185 ILO member states made a resolution to call for action and proposed a five pronged strategy – employment generation into all social and economic policy, employability to enhance to make a smooth transfer from school to work – basically dealing with the skills mismatch issues, to practice and implement a labour market policy to target those unemployed for a long time were some of the recommendations made.
I don’t think you have even implemented a passing labour policy. Active policy provides incentives. Have subsidies through enterprises and include more youth and unemployed. Enhance entrepreneurship to youth – ease access to credit to set up their own businesses. A very solid and comprehensive labour regulation providing equal access to labour market is also required.
Q: One of the issues the tourism industry has is with manpower and we are also facing the problem of an aging population. Can the tourism sector employ older people?
Lokuhetty: We are targeting 2.5 million tourists by 2015 and there is going to be a major shortage of skilled workers for the industry. Although tourism is developing, it is not considered as a permanent job which makes it hard to attract people to the industry. There has been little development in tourism as a profession and as a result, people only look at tourism when they can’t find another job. Most of the employees we train go abroad for better salaries.
I think we have to change our thinking as well. Definitely increase the retirement age. There is no issue with having elderly staff at a hotel. Retiring people at 55 is a bad policy as some of the organisations wait until the man reaches that age to get rid of the person. No performance evaluation is made to retain the person for longer. You find foreigners who have passed 55 as general managers here when our own people are retired, so there needs to be some policy changes there.
When you look at the university students, you see that most are arts graduates. We could align them to join the hotel industry. Our education system does not necessarily fulfil the country’s demands. Tourism is going to be one of the biggest industries in the country and I think it will be the biggest foreign exchange earner in the future.
In order to meet the demand in terms of employees, we need to align the education system to direct arts graduates to join the hotel industry. We are now in consultation with Ministry of Higher Education to explore the possibility of introducing a hospitality industry course after the second year of university. We have to look at increasing the retirement age, need more training institutions and explore how to attract graduates to the hotel industry.
Q: Females live longer than males. What is the reason?
De Silva: Males in Sri Lanka tend to live rather unhealthy lives with alcoholism, drug addiction and stressful work. When it comes to the females, it’s not that they are not exposed at all but are exposed at a minimal level. Men also postpone health treatment and suffer from incommunicable diseases.
Li: I think the tourism sector will be the potential sector for employment generation. The tourism sector is a major sector and ILO statistics show that one job in the tourism sector can produce one to five additional jobs in related industries. Furthermore, 60% to 70% workers in tourism are female and this will improve the low participation of females in the labour force.
Q: Are we over-dependent on remittances and what about policies to train, retrain and re-employ these women into a more dignified form of employment?
Li: I support the Government in the protection of migrant workers. Part of the project to reintegrate the migrant workers should include the provision of a training facility to provide employable skills because you have to adapt skills to the local market. A reintegration project will also be good to raise the skill level of migrant workers and it will be beneficial to integrate them into their own society.
De Silva: From the women working in the Middle East, 80% are housemaids. Yet, 70% of them did not work in Sri Lanka when they departed from country due to poverty and family issues. While families and the Government are benefitting from remittances, there are a large number of social issues to consider. Most women who have gone as housemaids return when they are old and won’t be recruited by the Government or private sector. They live slightly different lifestyles, don’t have much savings and may have to live alone when they return but Government does not have a very good policy on this matter although they work with reintegrating, this is at a fairly low level.
Q: Do you agree that science and technology alone are not sufficient to succeed in the job market?
Arunatilake: You also need soft skills such as communication, critical thinking etc. You need other skills in order to solve the actual social problems people have in order to innovate.
Gunatilaka: As a labour economist, I come face to face with the critical weaknesses of our students when we try to train them to do research. When we talk about primary and secondary education, we seem to think that it’s largely on track but there are some serious issues. The communication issue is one and it is a cultural problem. Sri Lankans don’t have a culture of listening and don’t let people finish speaking.
As a result there isn’t a culture to discuss, learn and revise ones opinions and ideas depending on what one hears. This is a vital ingredient for critical thinking and knowledge building. Students cannot conceptualise and this is due to the Government textbooks which teach students to learn in a confused and muddled way. Children can’t think thematically or structurally.
These are key skills that postgraduate students don’t have and we have to reengineer the way students think – they can’t summarise and get the main point. They can’t synthesise and if you don’t have that, it’s difficult to do postgraduate work as they cannot handle a multiplicity of ideas. Without these basic skills, it’s very hard to train students and produce the highly skilled workforce that we desperately need. This is a real problem that needs to be fixed.
Li: The ILO promotes market orientated training programs to enhance abilities. Research is first conducted to see what skills are actually needed in a specific industry in order to make it specific and programs are then conducted accordingly.
Q: Given that we are reaching the end of the demographic bonus, what Government policies have been or could be proposed to bring about positive discrimination?
Arunatilake: Part of this is business sophistication. It’s not easy to offer flexible hours as it has legal and administration problems but we need to think about changing laws to facilitate flexible work conditions and organisations need to be more adaptable as well. The business community should work together on this.
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Gunatilaka: There are very few women parliamentarians and they are clearly facing the same problems as other women in society. If there are more women in Parliament, then they would be able to speak on issues that concern women. Depending on our costly electoral system to produce women parliamentarians is not going to work.
