Economic and
Technological Cooperation Agreement(ETCA) is a hot topic in Colombo
these days(specially so if your employed in the IT sector). As
someone who is not too interested in happenings outside his immediate
bubble ETCA reached my ear only a few weeks back. So during these
last two weeks I looked into what how ETCA would impact the IT
industry and the country as a whole so that I could make up my own
mind about it.
As I
understand(please do take into consideration that I have next to no
education in economics, legislation or sociology) ETCA would benefit
the economy. Companies who operate by volume could bid for larger
projects and companies who are willing to pay the price of “real
experts” (beef no .3) could do so with ease and these workers would
increase these companies revenue. In the long run ETCA should
increase the pay of the average IT employee as well(as a bigger IT
workforce would build a bigger IT sector with more revenue driving
the GDP higher)
So then whats my
beef with ETCA?
- From all information I've been able to gather professional bodies representing IT such as CSSL, SLASSCOM upto date were not included in making of it.
- Have we looked into the social impact of the ETCA. Such as what would happen to those who might loose their jobs due to it.(Is there a safety net of sorts for these people?)
- How do we ensure that the workers who come in are actually experts? Would a filtering mechanism be implemented? at least similar to that of Singapore where employees must have 2 or 3 years of work experience and have had a salary higher than a specific amount.
- How do we increase IT graduate production so that one day we wont have such a need to bring workers down.
ETCA can be good if
its done right. Seriously Sri Lanka get your shit together, its
affecting my bubble!