Sri Lanka is to send some 10,000 farm hands to Israel following an agreement between the island-nation’s Ambassador to Tel Aviv Nimal Bandara and the Interior Minister of the Jewish State Moshe Arbel, medi reports said on Tuesday.
Israel’s Minister of Interior Moshe Arbel and Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Israel Nimal Bandaranaike have signed an agreement, which will allow Israel to immediately hire 10,000 Sri Lankan farm workers, the reports said.
This follows a Cabinet approval that allows Israeli companies to hire Sri Lankans for the agriculture sector in that country, the reports added.
Israel’s agricultural sector has been hard hit by the ongoing Gaza war with some 8,000 foreign farm hands having fled that country out of 30,000 foreign workers that were employed in the farming sector before the war.
In addition to that some 20,000 Palestinian agricultural workers in Israel were also booted out and banned from entering the country after the war broke out.
The first batch of Sri Lankan agricultural workers within the framework of this agreement would leave the country in the coming weeks.
