By Rathindra Kuruwita

The government is doing nothing to help the poor caught in a micro-credit trap, moderator of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR), Chinthaka Rajapakshe says.

Rajapakshe said that only the Parliamentary Committee on Gender Equality and some MPs, from both the government and Opposition, had shown some interest in the matter.

“We commend their interest. By the end of 2018, over 2.2 million Sri Lankans had taken microfinance loans amounting to Rs. 84.2 billion. We obtained this information from Microfinance Practitioners Association. This is a huge figure. Over 10% of Sri Lankans have taken these loans, almost always at very high interest rates. When one person in the family draws a loan, the entire family gets affected. So, we don’t know how many people are actually affected.”

Rajapakshe said MONLAR and a number of other organisations had been raising the issue for nearly half a decade, but successive governments had done little to address the issue.

“When they do, they come up with plans that benefit the lenders,” Rajapakshe said.

“Those affected by microcredit loans commenced a satyagraha at Hingurakgoda and it has dragged on for over a month. The government has taken no interest in it.”

In 2018, United Nations Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, visited the country and found that an overwhelming number of individuals who had obtained micro credit loans were women.

Rajapakshe said: “Bohoslavsky reported that women were pressured by collectors to exchange ‘sexual favours’ for instalments and that there are cases of borrowers who tried to sell their kidneys to repay the loans. Some leave their villages, suffer domestic violence as a punishment for the breach of contract or have to work much harder and longer to earn sufficient money to repay the debts. Some of them have committed suicide.”

Bohoslavsky’s report also says that while the universe of borrowers is broad, women in poor and war-affected areas are specially targeted by micro-finance financial institutions, which charge their loans with up to 220 per cent interest and apply compound interest.