INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
on Israeli farms.Supermarket manager Laknath Dias says the economic crisis in his native Sri Lanka is too much for him to bear
He is getting ready to fly to Israel in December to work as a farmhand for nearly 10 times the pay, despite the war with Hamas.Dias is among
20,000 workers that Sri Lanka, desperate for dollars and remittances, plans to send to Israel starting early next month to work in the farm
country, traditionally rely on thousands of Thai and Palestinian workers to till the land and bring in the crops.But many Thais fled Israel
after the Hamas assault on Oct
7, while the Palestinians have largely been banned from the workforce, forcing farms to send out an SOS for workers during the harvest.Dias,
areas in the east around 2005
enough to sustain his family of five because of the high cost of living
war in Gaza after gunmen from Hamas burst across the border fence, killing 1,200 people and seizing about 240 hostages, according to Israeli
Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed by Israeli bombardment, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled
territory.The Sri Lankan workers will join some 9,000 compatriots already in Israel, working in farming and care for the elderly.Sri Lanka,
pushing 2.5 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.It has seen a steep increase in the number of people migrating since
the crisis, with about 312,000 leaving in 2022 and 268,000 this year, government data shows
They have gone to countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.Source - Hindustan Times-
