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DAMBULLA: After leaving school, Jeewanthi Adikari was determined to pursue her studies in accounting. But her life took a different path when she began a three-month training program in hospitality.
She has since worked in different hotels in a career spanning over two decades. Now 42, she is in charge of Sri Lanka’s first resort fully operated and managed by women. It’s an attempt to address gender disparities in a male-dominated tourism sector crucial for the country’s economic recovery after a major crisis.
“This is a place where women can realize their potential. They will not be inside the shell. Instead, they will come out and try to perform better,” said Adikari, who oversees the daily operations of Amba Yaalu, a resort located in Dambulla city that serves as a gateway to most of Sri Lanka’s tourist attractions.
Most Sri Lankan women don’t get a chance to work in the tourism industry, earn money and own a career. In a country where 52 percent of the 22 million people are women, they account for only about 10 percent of the 200,000-strong workforce in the hospitality sector.
Amba Yaalu wants to be the driver of change
Some 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of Colombo, the resort is nestled in a mango plantation and all work is managed by 75 women staff who garden, work in the kitchens, clean the facility, address the guests and provide security in form of seven ex-military members. The resort’s facilities also include training programs for women to develop their skills in different areas of hospitality.
The resort opened in January and has been seen as a move unlocking women’s potential and driving the tourism economy in the debt-stricken nation.
The idea was conceived by seasoned hotelier Chandra Wickramasinghe, who said he was “inspired by the power of women,” especially that of his mother who raised him and and his seven siblings as a single parent.
“I knew what these ladies can do. I got the idea and put my team to work on it. We got a strong team to run it and it worked very well,” said Wickramasinghe, adding that the resort would enable women to thrive as leaders.
Social stigma, language barrier, work-life balance, lack of training facilities and low salaries have long kept majority of Sri Lankan women away from the hospitality industry, especially those in the rural areas, said Suranga Silva, professor of tourism economics in the University of Colombo.
Much of this stems from a patriarchal structure and traditional gender roles deeply embedded in Sri Lanka’s society, even though many women have made their mark in the country’s politics and have held key positions in the government. The island nation’s current prime minister, Harini Amarasuriya, is a woman.
“Tourism industry can’t be isolated from women,” said Silva, adding that women employment in Sri Lanka’s tourism is very low compared to the global and regional levels.
Lack of women professionals
Sri Lanka’s tourism and hospitality sector contributed 2.3 percent to the country’s economy in 2023 — down from 5 percent in 2018 — and the industry has traditionally been the country’s third largest foreign exchange earner. But the shortage of skilled women and some of them leaving jobs after getting married have challenges faced by the industry since the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings and the coronavirus pandemic.
Kaushalya Batagoda, the executive chef at the resort, said the industry faces a shortage of female professionals to serve in the kitchen and as a result, most the staff recruited to the resort’s kitchen were freshers who are still in training.
“But, the new generation has a passion for working in the kitchen,” she said, adding that she gets a lot of applications from women seeking jobs in the kitchen.
The resort has been lauded by women rights activists who have long been concerned about limited career choices of women and their mobility in Sri Lanka.
Women rights activist Sepali Kottegoda said such business enterprises can “open up more safe employment opportunities for women.”
Silva, the professor, said that “a dramatic change” is taking place as more young women are eager to join the industry, but suggested that the government and the sector must jointly provide training programs for women to improve their skills and employability.
At Amba Yaalu resort, some of these concerns are already being tackled.
“This is purely to empower women,” Adikari said. “We invite women to come and join us, see whether they can perform better in the career, sharpen their capacities and skills and contribute to the industry.”

GENEVA: Conflict in Congo has sent 63,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Burundi in its largest such influx in decades, with conditions dire at a crammed stadium camp and many stuck in fields outside, the UN said on Friday.
About 45,000 displaced people are sheltering in a crowded open-air stadium in Rugombo, a few km (miles) from the border with Democratic Republic of Congo where the Congolese army and M23 rebel group are fighting.
“The situation is absolutely dire. Conditions are extremely harsh,” Faith Kasina, the regional spokesperson for East and Horn of Africa and Great Lakes, told reporters in Geneva.
“The stadium is literally bursting at its seams and there is no additional space for shelter.”
Sanitary conditions inside the stadium are said to be poor with only 10 to 15 stalls of latrines for tens of thousands of people. Many families are being forced to camp in open fields nearby, according to the agency.
“Numbers keep swelling, it’s a race against time to try and save lives,” said Kasina, adding that the needs are fast outpacing the aid being provided.
The refugees include a large number of unaccompanied children separated from their families, the agency says.
On 21 February, UNHCR told a press briefing in Geneva that it would seek to move people from the stadium. However logistical challenges mean it takes six to eight hours to move large numbers of people to the Musenyi refugee site in southern Burundi. That site, which can host 10,000 people, is now 60 percent full, according to the agency.
The agency has urged countries to contribute to its emergency appeal for $40.4 million for lifesaving help to support the potential influx of 258,000 refugees into Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia.
The M23 advance is the gravest escalation in more than a decade of the long-running conflict in eastern Congo, rooted in the spillover of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide into Congo and the struggle for control of Congo’s vast mineral resources.
Rwanda rejects allegations by Congo, the United Nations and Western powers that it supports M23 with arms and troops. It says it is defending itself against the threat from a Hutu militia, which it says is fighting with the Congolese military.
Burundi has had its own soldiers in eastern Congo for years, initially to hunt down Burundian rebels there, but more recently, to aid in the fight against M23.

Pro-govt fighters kill 35 civilians

Meanwhile, at least 35 people were killed when pro-government militia attacked a village in the restive eastern DRC, local and security sources said on Friday.
The attack happened at about 3:00 am (0100 GMT) Thursday in the village of Tambi, in the Masisi area of North Kivu province controlled by the M23 armed group.
A security source told AFP that at least 35 people were killed in the attack, while local sources and an eyewitness put the death toll at more than 40.
A community leader and a medical source said villagers had recently returned to the area after having fled fighting between the M23 and the Congolese army and local militia.
“The ‘wazalendo’ (patriots in Swahili) militia went to attack Tambi where residents had started to return... they opened fire and civilians were killed,” said one community leader, who said 43 people died.
“They put some victims in a church and then shot them. Those who were in the fields were killed there.”
The community leader, a local health worker and a local resident said another group of civilians sought refuge in a house and died when the militia set it on fire.
“We counted 47 bodies in the morning,” the resident said, adding that they were buried in a communal grave.
Some of the victims were unable to be identified because of their burns, he added.
Different groups make up the militia, which has fought alongside the Congolese army against the M23. Their fighters are often accused of attacking civilians.
The M23, which according to UN experts is backed by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, is also accused of abuses.
The armed group resumed its fight against the government in Kinshasa in 2021 and has since seized swathes of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda.
A lightning offensive in recent weeks has seen it capture the provincial capital, Goma, and Bukavu, the main city in the neighboring province of South Kivu.
The DRC’s mineral-rich east has been ravaged for three decades by conflict and atrocities.