Sri-Lankan workers continue hunger strike demanding payment of their wages

MISSAN / IraqiNews.com: A group of Sri-Lankan workers have been on a hunger strike since Friday, demanding payment of their delayed wages by an Arab company, specialized in rural housing in southern Iraq ’s Missan Provnce, the Chairman of Missan’s Health & Environment Committee said on Saturday.   “Thirty Sri-Lankan workers have entered their hunger strike for the second day today (Saturday), in protest for non-payment of their wages since two years by Talaat Husamuddin Company, specialized in rural housing, contract of which was cancelled more than two months ago, after its failure to implement the rural housing project in al-Kheir village, 65 km to the southwest of Amara,” Meitham Lafta al-Fartousy told IraqiNews.com news agency.   Fartousy said that the local administration in Missan Province “had been mostly interested in the issue, through sending a number of doctors to treat the workers, along with its demand asking the Council of Ministers to send a special committee to arrange the payment of their salaries and facilitate their travel back to the country,” adding that the Province had granted each of the said workers 250 U.S. dollars, as a temporary measure, 30 days ago.   Iraq’s State Ministry for Al-Ahwar (Swamps) Affairs had withdrawn the contract for the implementation of a project from the said company, assigned to build 3,000 housing units in al-Kheir village, along with the formation of a committee to check the company’s properties and the percentage of accomplishment of the project, inviting foreign companies, such as French, Iranian and Turkish firms, to enter in a competition to build the project.   Amara, the center of Missan Provnce, is 390 km to the south of Baghdad .   SKH (RT) 590