MOHAMMED RASOOLDEEN
COLOMBO: The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, SLBFE, which started its vaccination campaign for the foreign job-seekers on Wednesday, has targeted to immunize 10,000 prospective workers within this week.
Assistant General Manager and spokesman for the SLBFE,Mangala Randeniya told the Colombo Times that the programme is to have the prospective overseas Lankan workers vaccinated against Covid according to the specifications of the foreign employers.
The vaccination center was administering Pfizer vaccines on the prospective foreign workers at the Army Hospital in Narhenpita.
Countries in the Middle East including those in the Gulf region and from the Far-east and Europe and America have so far approved Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Moderna vaccine and a single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccines for arriving workers.
The Middle East is the home to more than 750,000 out of the one million Lankan overseas workers in the globe. There is another 500,000 Lankans who are residents in overseas workplaces.
Randeniya said that some 6,000 workers from the Middle East have got their employment confirmed and they need to get the Pfizer to exempt themselves from mandatory quarantine in the host countries. The other 4,000 are from Far-east starting from Korea to Singapore and European countries and the Americas.
The official said that the Lankan migrant workers amount to one million and 75 percent are in the Middle East and the rest are placed in other countries. “ These workers bring in some $ 7.2 billion for a year which is a sizable volume in the Lanka’s budget.
Minister of Labor Nimal Siripala de Silva, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Retired Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe, Director of the Army Medical Corps Dr. Brigadier Chandika Attanayake, Deputy General Manager of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment Mangala Randeniya were present at the inauguration of the program on Wednesday
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This vaccination program is implemented island wide and those who have obtained a visa and employment contract to go abroad for employment can register for the vaccine by visiting the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment website www.slbfe.lk
They will then be notified by SMS of the date, time and place where the vaccine will be given, and accordingly they can come to the relevant vaccination center and get the covid vaccine. The second dose will be given exactly one month after the first jab.
Randeniya also thanked the army, ministry of health, Rataviru and Ranaviru organisations and others who helped the SLBFE in this venture.