Image Source: News NPR
To avoid a future food shortage, Sri Lanka urges government employees to take an extra day off each week to grow crops in their backyards.
Several fundamental goods, as well as petrol and medicines, are in low supply due to an unprecedented economic crisis, and soaring inflation is wreaking havoc on household budgets.
The extra day off would be a “solution to the impending food shortage,” according to the statement, which also stated that reducing civil servant trips would help reduce fuel usage.
The United Nations has declared a “dire humanitarian catastrophe” in Sri Lanka, claiming that four out of every five people in the country of 22 million have been forced to skip meals.
Meanwhile, motorists have endured months of gasoline and fuel shortages, with huge lines of vehicles forming outside gas stations regularly.
According to the cabinet resolution, public employees will have every Friday off for the next three months without losing pay; however, the agreement will not apply to essential services employees.
According to the administration, any of the government’s 1.5 million public sector employees who want to look for work overseas would be offered up to five years of unpaid leave without affecting their seniority or pension.
The measure is intended to encourage more individuals to work in foreign countries and return money to the island, which is suffering from a severe scarcity of foreign currency to buy imports.
Sri Lanka has defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt and is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation has been asked due to economic mismanagement and the extreme hardships that the people are experiencing.
Soon after taking power in November, Rajapaksa enacted substantial tax cuts, which have been blamed for leaving the island unable to pay for crucial imports.
The Covid-19 outbreak devastated the tourism business, and limited remittances from Sri Lankans working overseas exacerbated the monetary shortage.
