According to Lebanese rights groups, the ill-reputed sponsorship system of migrant workers, known in Arabic as ‘kafala,’ which dates back to the 1960s, has made it more difficult for the presence of foreign migrant workers to be monitored by the Lebanese government. They have told the media that the government has failed to identify many of the dead bodies of workers at Beirut’s hospitals. There are over 250,000 foreign labourers living in Lebanon and the number of Sri Lankans among them are around 25, 000.