Sri Lanka’s cabinet has approved a proposal for public sector workers to provide them with the day off every Friday for the next three months to encourage them to farm in the face of the looming food crisis.
The government information office said in a statement that “it seems appropriate to grant government officials leave of one working day […] to engage in agricultural activities in their backyards or elsewhere as a solution to the food shortage that is expected to occur in the future”.
According to the statement, public employees will have an additional day off without a pay cut, in line with the proposal, which will not apply to essential services staff.
The government also said any of Sri Lanka’s 1.5 million public sector workers who wanted to travel abroad to find work would be given up to five years of unpaid leave without affecting their seniority or pension.
The move aims to encourage more people to get foreign jobs and send money back to Sri Lanka, which is grappling with its worst financial crisis in decades.
The cabinet’s proposal on the additional day off come a few days after Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned that Sri Lanka’s economic crisis “could develop into a full-blown humanitarian emergency” and that the OCHA is “taking action to address that concern”.
He said that Sri Lanka's worst economic crisis since the country gaining independence in 1948 was already taking a heavy toll, with the nation’s agriculture and livelihoods severely affected.
According to Laerke, many people in Sri Lanka are now “going without adequate food” and “families' access to health services, protection and children's education is at stake”.
The island nation, which is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout, defaulted on its $51 billion in foreign debt in mid-April. This was followed by mass public protests to demand the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa over the mismanagement of the national economy, which came amid daily blackouts, long queues for petrol and record inflation.
The protests came as a foreign exchange crisis left the government unable to pay for essential imports, resulting in unprecedented shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, brother of the president, was forced to resign last month following the protests, which turned into violent clashes with police, killing eight and injuring over 200.