Today, january 7th, we left at 9 am to spend a few hours in the university of Ruhuna, where we learned about the economy of Sri Lanka. The lecture was held by Dr. Sumanarathna, where he explained that Sri Lanka had an economic crisis and not a financial crisis. The normal salary to make in a year is approximately 50 thousand kroner, which is 1.3 million rupi’s.
Later we drove about one hour to visit a fabric factory called Miami Exports, located in Ranna. We learned a lot of interesting things about the process of making clothes. When the fabric arrives at the factory, it has to be pressed so it is nice and without wrinkles, then it is placed in shelves where they have different places for different colors and the fabric type. The fabric has to go through different stages before it can be sown into clothes. After the long process, it goes through different stations where different people make different parts of the product, some fix the waistband, others work on the stitching around the neck.
We also learned that there are approximately 1200 employees, where the age goes from 18 all the way up to 50. The worker here typically work 10 hours a day. The factory have two different stations where the buildings are packed with workers. When walking inside the buildings, we could se that the majority of the workers were women.
Group 2 - Karoline, Jenni, Leah, Emma