Sri Lanka earned Rs. 382 Billion from Foreign Employment last year.

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Sri Lanka earned Rs. 382 Billion from Foreign Employment last year.


Tuesday, 27 July 2010
The remittances received last year from Sri Lankan expatriates topped country’s foreign exchange earnings and amounted to Rs. 382 Billion. The Minister of Youth Affairs Mr. Dallas Alahapperuma has said that measures will be taken to double this amount and increase it to Rs. 764 Billion this year.
Addressing a function held in Colombo in connection with handing overof appointment letters to 25 lecturers selected for Technical Collegeswhich conduct grade 5 and 6 Technical Diploma Courses, and covers the9 provinces in the country, the Minister said that most of the SriLankans employed overseas are in Middle East countries in vocationssuch as housemaid and housekeeping services which provide lesssalaries. Only 25.5% of the overseas employed at present are workingas skilled employees.Under-skilled employees account for 2.6%. This 72% of overseasemployed working in unskilled categories. The Minister said thatevery effort will be made to increase the skilled overseas employedpersons to 50%, which could easily increase the amount of remittancesto Rs. 764 billion. He said that this could be achieved by improvingthe capacity of technical education which is not an unachievable task. (niz).