There is a house (mansion) made in Kirulapone which was done by about 7 Chinese engineers and helpers. amazing. Ppl say it’s Chamal R’s. Possible hearsay..who knows.

Nicely said…the Norwegians just gave WUSC 300 million for vocational training…most of it will go to the NE..let’s hope this gives people there the required skills and the Provincial Authorities can demand for jobs for trained personnel.

Development negotiations mostly focus on commissions and field trips for the donors to monitor. Little trickles down to the intended recipient. That must change.

It has to change!

Look, the Chinese are FAR more efficient than Sri Lankans. It might be unpalatable but a lot of Sri Lankans are generally greedy, lazy, good-for-nothing oafs who are looking for the next bribe to slip into their pockets. If Sri Lankans were building Hambantota port, the only thing that would be there by now would be the “mul gala.” I don’t think that is an over-exaggeration. The Chinese workers work day AND night, and they get the job done. If it means the port is completed ahead of schedule and opens early, then I say fu*k the lazy ass Sri Lankan workers. The long term benefits to Sri Lanka as a whole far outweigh the temporary creation of local jobs.

The local value addition from these Chinese projects seems pretty limited.

Add to that the highly inflated costs (due to the corruption) and the market interest rates apparently paid on the funding and all you have left with is the physical infrastructure.

If the infrastructure is not properly designed (badly sighted for example), then the return from that will be small.

I don’t know, one reason could be that there aren’t enough *consistently good* local workers available. I have heard many guys who own lands/paddy fields complain that its hard to find “minissu” these days, and most people just come and go because there is more work than there are laborers. Few years back, police nabbed some Indian (and Chinese, iirc) laborers who were illegally working in SL paddy fields.

It may be possible that our guys have moved on to better jobs, or even without jobs, don’t like to go for so-called “menial” jobs, even while whining all the way. If it is the former, then it’s good. Have you noticed even beggars these days are better dressed compared to few decades ago? And how many people own at least a moto-bike and how many cycle shops have closed down?

As C. A. Chandraprema once said, even our terrorists look(ed) better-fed than other terrorists.

The worst part about all this is that the loans for these projects are being taken out from a Chinese Bank called Axim Bank (or something like that) at commercial rates. One of the conditions was to have Chinese workers! WTF? As if it wasn’t enough that we have to pay commercial rates, we even have to give employment opportunities to them! :(

Stormcrow – you can’t argue that local workers are inefficient therefore use foreigners.

What are we supposed to do with the locals – put them on a permanent dole or let them starve?

The government needs to set policies that will encourage the creation of employment. If inefficiency is a problem, they need to start working on means of improving productivity, starting in secondary school if necessary.

Laws that make it difficult to sack workers encourage complacency and slack while making firms reluctant to hire workers. With the right policies we can get a lot more out of the locals.

Jack Point,

I didn’t say that local workers are “inefficient”. To the contrary, having been in a so called first world country for some time before coming to SL, I have the opinion that our guys are rather great at many stuff.

But the fact remains that good men are hard to find, this is not because majority are bad, but simply because there is more work than there are men. I hope you get this point, which should have been clear from the rest of my post, although perhaps my emphasis was wrongly placed. You can verify if you know anyone who owns a agricultural land or at least a building site.

May be it’s just cheaper for the Chinese to import labor. May be they don’t want to pay a good enough salary for locals to make them appear consistently, but still can get Chinese for lower salaries. May be. Fact is, there *have been* illegal foreign workers in Sri Lanka which means at least under some conditions, foreign labor is cheaper in SL! (which, _in a way_, is a positive thing)

I generally agree with what else you say about labor policy etc, but that’s besides my point.

I think I read in Sunday Times or some other news paper that most of these Chinese labourers are actually Chinese prisoners. I’m not sure. Years ago when Koreans worked here, they say the rat population rose dramatically, because the Koreans were making soups from Vipers. Do Chinese eat frogs? If so, two things will happen. First, there’d be twice as much insects as there are now. Secondly, Bandula Gunawardana will see the inside of a Chinese belly.