Resilient plantations: Advancing workers’ safety, health, and livelihood recovery

Sri Lanka’s plantation sector, central to national employment and export earnings, faces persistent OSH challenges, including exposure to agrochemicals, unguarded machinery, difficult terrain, extreme heat, and gender-differentiated risks. These have intensified following Cyclone Ditwah that made landfall in Sri Lanka on 28 November 2025, with torrential rainfall and destructive winds causing widespread flooding and landslides across the country, the worst flood in Sri Lanka in 20 years. Plantation workers now face heightened physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial risks, alongside severe livelihood disruptions as landslides, damaged infrastructure, and destroyed crops have made work impossible for thousands of workers.

The project funded by the Government of Japan thus seeks to address these concerns by supporting a safe and healthy working environment for plantation workers and supporting the repair of essential community and plantation infrastructure using employment-intensive investment approaches that generate short-term decent jobs for displaced and vulnerable workers.

Overall, this project builds on the achievements of the ILO’s Safety + Health for All Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka project (2021–2024) and introduces an emergency employment component to respond to the devastating impacts of Cyclone Ditwah on plantation workers and supporting affected communities in restoring livelihoods and strengthening resilience.