TOS Lanka Co. (Pvt) Ltd, a BOI company in Biyagama, has launched a CSR project that employs prison inmates on a part-time basis to service their operations.
President of TOS Lanka, Jitsuo Mikasa, who was in Sri Lanka recently on a brief visit, said that this initiative has been launched with the Department of Prisons and appreciated the positive manner in which the Government institution responded to this.
He said that they outsource some of their work to the Prisons Department which in turn gets them done through the inmates.
“We have also trained some of the inmates along with officials to overseas the operation. As we are paying an attractive fee for this, the prison inmates who engage with us also get a payback for their work which is of high quality,” he said.
TOS Lanka was opened in 1995 as a BOI venture with Sri Lankan partner/CEO Merrick Gooneratne to assemble electronic components to be exported to leading Japanese and European companies engaged in automobile and other high end industries. Gooneraratne said that have also launched a similar CSR initiative for women drop their children in schools and wait till the school closes to take them back.
“In this instance we provide them transport to our factory and drop them back in time to pick up the child. This scheme is a win-win situation for both as we have the advantage of finding labour while the mother who is idling for about six hours also get a payment and can move out of other vices,” he said.
