Sri Lanka’s former Deputy High Commissioner in Australia ordered to pay 543,000 Australian dollars in unpaid wages to domestic servant
An Australian Federal Court has ordered Sri Lanka’s former Deputy High Commissioner to Australia to pay 543,000 Australian dollars in unpaid wages to her domestic worker.
Australian media has reported that the Deputy High Commissioner of the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Canberra, Australia’s capital, was ordered to pay salary arrears to Priyanka Dhanaratne, who was brought from Sri Lanka to work as a housekeeper from 2015 to 2018 in the Deputy High Commissioner’s house.
Priyanka Dhanaratne has been working in the house of the former Deputy High Commissioner for three years. It was revealed in the trial that she had only two days of leave during those three years. After hearing a case filed in the Australian court regarding the non-payment of wages to the concerned housekeeper and her being employed as a slave, the court issued an order to pay her the arrears of wages.
In the relevant trial, it was revealed that Priyanka, the domestic worker, was paid only 11,212 Australian Dollars by the former Australian Deputy Commissioner for the three years of her service.
Australian media also reports that even the passport of the Sri Lankan domestic worker, whose salary was not paid properly, was taken into custody by the former Deputy High Commissioner on the day she arrived in Australia, and it was not given back to her. The lawyers say that the former Deputy Commissioner of Sri Lanka violated Australia’s law by not paying the due salary and not giving leave to the concerned housekeeper. Australian lawyers have analyzed the way the former Sri Lanka Deputy Commissioner treated her housekeeper as an example of modern-day slavery.
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