Despairing professionals exit Sri Lanka to escape economic crisis

Dr Eranda Ranasinghe left Sri Lanka earlier this month to work in a hospital in Belfast in Britain. PHOTO: COURTESY OF ERANDA RANASINGHE

BANGALORE - Cardiac intensive care doctor Eranda Ranasinghe, 30, cannot forget the mornings when he left the Sri Jayewardenepura government hospital in Colombo after a backbreaking night shift, only to go straight to join a petrol queue.

"There were days I waited till midnight for petrol," he said.

His aim had been to work abroad some day, and his middle-class family's financial difficulties during the economic crisis in Sri Lanka only accelerated his job search.

In early August, he started work in a hospital in Belfast in Britain.

"I'm quite attached to my family, but I had to leave. I've lost all hope of Sri Lanka recovering. I didn't see any positive change coming for at least 20 years," said Dr Ranasinghe.

Bankrupt Sri Lanka is suffering 61 per cent price inflation, as well as crippling fuel and medicine shortages since March, as the island nation ran out of foreign currency in December to import essentials.

Citizens protested nationwide for months, blaming then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, his family and supporters for mismanagement that worsened the pandemic's impact on the nation's export and tourism economy.

Dr Ranasinghe joined the protesting millions at the Galle Face seafront in Colombo, hoping for systemic change. But he became especially despondent in July after Mr Rajapaksa fled to Singapore and later to Thailand, "while we Sri Lankans were stuck suffering his blunders".

As hardships escalate, thousands of skilled workers and professionals are leaving, a concentrated version of the gradual brain drain the country saw during the 30-year civil war that ended in 2009.

Colombo-based Institute of Policy Studies, which studies migration, said departures were four times higher in the first six months of 2022 compared with all of 2021.

There have been three times more applications for passports this year than in 2021. More than 590,260 passports were issued in the first seven months of the year, compared with 147,192 in the same period last year.

Effectively, the country with a 22 million population has been issuing 84,000 new passports every month this year.

Sri Lanka's central bank records 140,701 people having gone abroad for employment in the first half of the year, compared with 117,952 for the entirety of 2021.

Most have gone to the Gulf countries, followed by Europe. Australia and India have also seen dozens of illegal arrivals of desperate Sri Lankans on boat.

An anaesthetist, her advertising entrepreneur husband and their four-year-old daughter are all set to leave Sri Lanka by the end of the year. The well-off family has had enough of the skyrocketing prices and economic uncertainty.

"I don't want to be that mother who can't give her kid what she needs," said the 34-year-old anaesthetist who wants to remain anonymous.

She is disgusted when ministers blame scarcities on "people's overconsumption" and current president Ranil Wickremesinghe resorts to arrests of dozens of protesters to quell dissent.

"Politicians are corrupt everywhere in the world, but I haven't seen any as flippant or callous about people's struggles as Sri Lankan politicians," she said.

Dozens of her fellow nurses, doctors and technicians have already migrated this year. "More will follow, and Sri Lankan healthcare will suffer the loss," the anaesthetist said.

The exit is riddled with snags. Emigrating job aspirants paying for foreign licensing examinations or eligibility tests in dollars or pounds said foreign exchange (forex) payments from Sri Lankan banks were routinely rejected.

Without enough foreign currency, the Sri Lankan government has defaulted in repaying foreign loans of about US$51 billion (S$71 billion), and imposed limits on citizens holding foreign currency or doing forex transactions.

The crashed Sri Lankan rupee, now at 355 a US dollar, also bloats all foreign bills.

Yet, to get a local bank account, Dr Ranasinghe cannot yet escape his home country's chaos even in Britain.

redit cards from his Sri Lankan banks limit international transactions to 50,000 rupees (S$190) a month, which is about £100, "just enough for three basic meals a day and nothing more", he said.

To escape Sri Lanka's banking obstacles and administrative delays, some professionals are leaving to work in the Middle East as they apply from there, free of procedural hurdles or lengthy power cuts, for European jobs.

Digital marketer Vinuk Kumaratunge, 23, was able to go to British Columbia in Canada in January for a postgraduate degree in business management because his Australia-based aunt sponsored his tickets and first-year fees.

"What happened in 2022 was a tipping point for a lot of my friends. Everyone is trying to leave Sri Lanka," he said.

The son of a taxi driver called it "jumping out of the boiling pot before it was too late".

This article was originally published on The Straits Times. Its inclusion on this website is solely for education purposes. 

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