By Nizla Naizer
She was one and half months old when she was left abandoned in a garbage dump in Gampaha. The start may have been dismal but W.A. Dhammika’s life has been an extraordinary tale of overcoming the odds. Selected as one of MAS Holding’s Empowered Woman for the year 2008, she is now a quality controller at the MAS Slimtex factory which produces higher fashion intimate lingerie to US.
She started with no name and no family, but this young woman is an inspiration to us all as she committed to change her life for the better and never looked back.
Dhammika’s story
She was discovered that day when fate intervened, and the spade of the garbage worker struck the baby, causing her to cry out. She still has the scar. The workers took Dhammika to the Gampaha Police Station and she grew up in an orphanage, with no relatives or family to call her own. She was a bright student and did well in school, actively participating and excelling in dancing, drama, writing and speech.
She passed her scholarship examination and sat for her O/Ls but after her exams, an unscrupulous woman took advantage of her lack of family, employed her as a housemaid but treated her horribly.

“She treated me like a dog,” she recalls with tears in her eyes. “I was put in a cage and fed the food the dogs were given. For three years I had to take care of her children and then I decided I had to get away somehow.” Homeless and penniless, Dhammika left in the hope that better things will come her way. She started working at a factory in Ja-Ela. However an ear ailment compelled her to seek medical treatment. The hospital staff injected her with wrong medication which caused a nerve to be injured giving her acute pain and resulting in her losing all her hair. “When I returned to the factory with the medical certificate, they had sacked me.”

She was left with nothing again. Taken advantage of by another unscrupulous employer who abused her as a servant, she walked out onto the streets again. “I was out on the streets with no where to go for two nights,” she says. But Dhammika was an enterprising young woman. She entered the Makandara Hospital as a patient and spent the night in a ward till she could look for some direction the next day.

Fate intervened once again, and Dhammika bumped into a woman on the streets who worked at MAS. “She took pity on me when I told her my story, and told me that MAS was recruiting women to work in their factories the next day.” In a true gesture of kindness, the woman took Dhammika home and asked her to spend the night. “I had no clothes, no money, only my birth certificate and O/L certificate. I wore that lady’s nightdress for the night and wore my torn clothes to the interview.”

Dhammika’s courage and fortitude paid off. She was hired as a thread cutter. She then joined Slimline as a checking operator and progressed to become Line Leader and now a Quality Controller. “I found a family at Slimtex. I’m now married and we’re building a house together.” The greatest gift of all? As she speaks to me, her hand goes protectively to her abdomen, “I am also three months pregnant. And I am so happy.”

She owes the change in her life to the opportunity provided by MAS. “When I came to MAS I was a beggar. I had nothing, but they gave me a life. And they have empowered thousands of women like me. I am deeply grateful.”