Caritas Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Employment organized a capacity enhancement programme for stakeholders engaged in the safe labour migration related work in Ampara district recently. This is the first such programme conducted under this series and more such programme are to be held in the districts of Nuwara Eliya, Colombo, Gampaha, Batticaloa, Vanni, Jaffna and Kurunegala in the coming months.
The objective of these workshops is to build the capacities of the participants in spheres related to the case handling procedures, especially deploying an empathetic approach to their profession while dealing with the people whom they serve.
During the first workshop in Ampara, a group of 43 participants including Migration Development Officers in the district of Ampara, leaders of the migration societies formed by SWOAD-Social Welfare Organaization Ampara District, a deep impact partner under the project funded by Swiss Agency For Development Corporation (SDC) attended the 2-day residential programme held at the Monty Hotel in Ampara on 28th and 29th of November 2019. The programme was conducted in the Tamil medium.
During the first day, the participants had the opportunity to engage in interactive sessions, especially in understanding the type of cases they receive and how they engage as officers in dealing with such migrant cases. A psychosocial approach was infused into the sessions by the resource person to make them aware of the other side of the migrant’s story to improve the quality of their services while understanding the emotions in a better way and agony that the vulnerable migrants and their family members go through.
Mr. G. Gnanapragasam Suresh, Technical Advisor – Education and Lifeskills was the resource person who conducted the sessions.He used adult-learning methodologies based on 10:20:70 model for development and learning and 4A’s learning models during the workshop.
On the second day of the programme, Mr. M .K. Pathamanaathan , Director General Human Resources & Mission Management , Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed the participants on the procedures related to the death cases of the vulnerable migrant workers who are not registered or when deaths occur at a time when their registration with SLBFE has expired. The migration officers who deal with such situations and cases daily had numerous queries to ask from the ministry officials.
Mr. Anura Kumara, Manager, Welfare Division, Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment spoke on the procedures related to the insurance, death compensation and procedural document requirements when applying for migrants’ case related matters at SLBFE.
Migration team of Caritas Sri LankaNational Centre spearheaded organizing and arranging the logistics in close collaboration with SWOAD in Ampara. This project intervention was carried out under the SDC funded Safe Labour Migration Project.
