Sri Lanka’s Left in the Tariff Trap

Katunayake FTZ workers skip travel home to vote due to high bus fares” reported a Sri Lankan news outlet on the morning of Monday, May 5, one day before local government elections. The headline captured in just a few words the quiet crisis unfolding in the country’s Free Trade Zones. One young garment worker put it plainly: “We just can’t afford the bus fare to go home and vote. So, we’re staying back in the dormitories.”

Alongside her are hundreds of others — predominantly women — who have made the same choice, not out of political apathy, but due to sheer economic constraint. Their absence at the polls is not just a story of personal hardship. It’s a powerful symbol of how economic vulnerability is now silencing low-income Sri Lankans’ political voice, and how the country’s export-led growth model has reached a breaking point…..| read more on JACOBIN