“SriLanka Protests 2022” by Nazly Ahmed is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Script
Navin: Hi My name is Navin Muthuarachchi and I’m an international student from Sri Lanka today I’ll be interviewing a student from Sri Lanka to talk about the economic crisis currently happening in Sri Lanka To begin But why don’t you introduce yourself
Hashini: hi I’m Hashini I’m an international student from Sri Lanka. I’m in my third year of computer science
Navin: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about Sri Lanka?
Hashini: sure, Sri Lanka is an island as known as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It has extensive plains, beautiful mountains, and amazing beaches around the country.
Navin: Despite the beauty of the country, Sri Lanka is currently undergoing an economic crisis can you elaborate on that?
Hashini: the downfall of the country began when Gotabaya Rajapakse was elected as the president of the country. He started borrowing money from major countries as a cover-up for developing the country, but he decided to keep it for himself.
Navin: that’s not good. So, what exactly happened to the economy because of that?
Hashnini: it caused the economy to collapse as we lost access to overseas markets and as a result imports of fuel and other essential items were put on hold and everything just became so expensive to afford. people still have a hard time feeding their families at filling up their vehicles with gas. The limited available gas has caused major queues at gas stations.
Navin: well, that’s just awful. As an international student, how did this affect you?
Hashini: As you probably know international tuition fees are really expensive and it’s almost impossible for the students to work part-time an earned sufficient funds so we always have to depend on our parents for that but, since the banks won’t allow sending large amounts of money abroad due to the inflation, parents actually have a hard time sending enough money for tuition so most of the Sri Lankan students have to work full time do multiple jobs during summer to earn the necessary funds for tuition
Navin: as you can see, we are in a really tough spot now and we all hope that everything will get better over time. Anyways thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me and to share this story about the economy of Sri Lanka
Hashini: No problem. thanks for having me