The authorities have decided to ban Sri Lankan maids from overseas employment from April 1 while promoting job opportunities for males in foreign countries, Labour Ministry officials said yesterday.
They said Sri Lankan women will be allowed to take up overseas job slots as ‘Advanced Housekeepers’ after obtaining a National Vocational Qualification certificate.
According to the new scheme the Advanced Housekeepers will be entitled to a monthly salary of between US$ 300-500 depending on experience and other related issues.
“All these many years we concentrated on sending housemaids for foreign employment but now this has changed.
The Advanced Housekeepers will be monitored by the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) and they would receive a decent wage and secured employment from start to finish of their work contract’, they said.
Apart from the traditional West Asian job market the Government is also seeking to secure employment from others countries such as Israel, Malaysia and so on, they said.
“It was only the other day that a delegation from the Israeli Private Agencies, Association also known as PIBA was in the country and they assured some 2,000 jobs for Sri Lankan female caregivers below 45 years of age”, they said.
Separately the Malaysian authorities are looking to recruit 10,000 more Sri Lankans as private security personnel sometime this year.
In the previous year Malaysia offered employment to 10,000 Sri Lankans both in the skilled and unskilled categories.
The Government is also currently hunting for jobs for Sri Lankans in countries such as Romania, Poland, Japan, Turkey, and South Korea and so on, the officials said.