Protect CA Students: End Exploitative Training Practices in Sri Lanka

 

To:

• The Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka)
• Relevant Government and Labour Authorities
• Training Firms and Employers

Introduction

We write with profound sorrow and urgency following the tragic death of a Chartered Accountancy student in Sri Lanka, reportedly linked to extreme overwork and physical exhaustion during practical training.

This devastating loss has shaken the CA community and the wider public. It has also compelled long-suppressed conversations into the open—conversations that CA students, graduates, professionals, and even firm insiders have been having for years , often without meaningful response.

This petition is not about blame.
It is about responsibility, accountability, and preventing the next tragedy.

A Widely Acknowledged Systemic Problem

In the aftermath of this incident, numerous public posts, discussions, and statements by:

• CA students and alumni,
• Practicing professionals
• Industry-related pages and forums
• Members of the wider academic and business community  

have openly acknowledged a culture within CA training that normalizes:

• Excessive and prolonged working hours
• Overnight work and continuous weekend work
• Severe physical and mental exhaustion
• Fear of raising concerns due to power imbalance
• Treating trainees as full-time staff without corresponding protections

The consistency of these accounts across independent sources makes one thing clear: this is not an isolated incident, but a systemic failure.

Training Allowances and Economic Reality

Another deeply concerning issue is the training allowance structure applicable to CA students.

In many instances, CA trainees receive allowances that are lower than or barely comparable to the minimum wage paid to unskilled workers

This is despite:

• Extremely long working hours
• Professional-level responsibilities
• Revenue-generating work for firms
• High academic and ethical expectations

This creates a troubling contradiction:

One of the most demanding professional training programmes in the country compensates its students at or below unskilled labour levels, while expecting extraordinary sacrifices of time, health, and wellbeing.

Such conditions undermine dignity, fairness, and the very idea of professional training.

 
How Sri Lanka Compares Internationally

In countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, accounting students and trainees generally benefit from:

• Clear limits on working hours and mandatory rest periods
• Salaries or wages aligned with minimum wage and market standards
• Defined learning objectives that prevent misuse of trainees as routine labour
• Confidential grievance and whistleblower mechanisms
• Active oversight by professional bodies to protect student welfare
• While peak workloads do exist internationally, systemic overwork and extreme exhaustion are neither normalized nor accepted as unavoidable.

Sri Lankan CA students deserve the same basic protections and respect afforded to their peers abroad.

The Responsibility of CA Sri Lanka

CA Sri Lanka is not merely an examining or membership body.
It is the custodian of professional values, ethics, and public trust.

With that role comes a responsibility to ensure that:

• Practical training environments are humane and ethical
• Student wellbeing is treated as a priority, not an inconvenience
• Silence does not enable harmful practices 

A profession that demands integrity, accountability, and ethical conduct must reflect those values in how it treats its future members.

Our Requests

We respectfully call upon CA Sri Lanka and relevant stakeholders to:

• Publicly acknowledge the concerns surrounding CA student working conditions
• Introduce clear, enforceable standards on working hours and rest periods for trainees
• Ensure transparency and monitoring of training environments
• Establish an independent and confidential grievance mechanism for CA students
• Protect students from retaliation when concerns are raised in good faith
• Review and revise training allowances to ensure they reflect living costs and workload
• Align Sri Lanka’s CA training framework with internationally accepted best practices
   

Why This Matters

No professional qualification should come at the cost of physical health, mental wellbeing, or life itself.

If this moment passes without meaningful reform, it will not remain a tragedy—it will become a pattern.

We urge CA Sri Lanka to act with courage, compassion, and responsibility.

Let this loss mark a turning point toward reform, accountability, and humanity.

Protect CA students. Uphold professional ethics. Ensure dignity in training.