• Seeks Presidential intervention citing Lankan migrant workers having to visit India for work visa

The Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies (ALFEA) has urged President Ranil Wickremesinghe to convince several European countries to establish their diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka, claiming that the lack of such has caused great hardships to Sri Lankans who seek jobs in such countries, and to employment agencies.

Speaking to The Daily Morning, the ALFEA Secretary Mohamed Farook Mohamed Arshad said that there are many job opportunities in European countries such as Malta, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Serbia and Albania, but that Sri Lankan job seekers and employment agencies have had to face a multitude of issues in securing them. He attributed the lack of diplomatic missions of such countries in Sri Lanka to be the main reason behind the issue. "A wide range of job opportunities are available in these countries, from labour to engineering. However, Sri Lankans applying for those jobs have to visit such countries' diplomatic missions in India and stay there for almost two weeks to complete the relevant process. It costs around Rs. 300,000 to visit India and come back. There is a lot of congestion there at present. Due to these reasons, job seekers have to spend a lot of time and money to apply for visas."

Arshad said that it is not possible to recover the money that they (job seekers) spent in case they are not offered visas, while the agencies also cannot recover the money that they paid to the agencies of the respective countries for the work permits. Charging that they had not received a positive response to several requests that they had made to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to resolve the issue, he said that an intervention by Wickremesinghe would be greatly appreciated.

Attempts to contact the Minister of Foreign Affairs, President's Counsel M.U.M. Ali Sabry proved futile.