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.

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.

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.

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.

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!