Independent Contractor Agreement

1.1 This Independent Contractor Agreement ("Agreement") is between Ceylon Seva (Pvt) Ltd ("Ceylon Seva", "we") and you, an independent service provider ("Worker", "you"). It supplements the Platform Terms of Service, which you have also accepted.

1.2 It applies to all of your engagements through the Platform — whether the Client is a business or a private household, and whether the services are business, general, domestic or household services. Household Clients are governed, on their side, by the Household Client Agreement; business Clients by the Client Agreement (Business).

1.3 You accept this Agreement when you complete registration as a Worker, by an affirmative act recorded as an electronic signature — an auditable record linking your account identity, the version of this Agreement accepted, and the date and time. This electronic signature is valid, binding and admissible, and satisfies any requirement for a signature, under the Electronic Transactions Act, No. 19 of 2006 (as amended).

1.4 The English version of this Agreement governs. A translation is provided for convenience; if its meaning differs, the English version prevails. You may ask for help understanding the Agreement before signing.

2.1 You provide your services as an independent contractor under a contract for services. You are not an employee, worker, agent or partner of Ceylon Seva, and nothing in this Agreement or your use of the Platform creates an employment, agency, partnership or joint-venture relationship with Ceylon Seva.

2.2 You are likewise not an employee of any Client. You contract with the Client as principal to principal; Ceylon Seva is not a party to that service contract and merely facilitates it.

2.3 As an independent contractor, you are not entitled to wages, EPF/ETF contributions, gratuity, paid leave, notice of termination or any other employment entitlement from Ceylon Seva, and Ceylon Seva makes no statutory employment contributions in respect of you.

2.4 Domestic and household engagements. Where you provide domestic or household services, your status is the same: you contract with the household as principal to principal, as an independent contractor. Ceylon Seva does not employ you, does not act as the household's payroll or employment agent, and does not register, receive or remit EPF/ETF or any other statutory contribution in respect of you. Under Sri Lankan law, domestic workers in direct household employment are excluded from mandatory EPF/ETF coverage. If you wish to build statutory savings, you may be able to apply in your own name for voluntary self-employed membership of the Employees' Trust Fund under section 18 of the Employees' Trust Fund Act; acceptance of any such application is a matter for the ETF Board and is not within Ceylon Seva's control, and Ceylon Seva gives no assurance that it will be granted.

3.1 Clients request services through the Platform. You are free to accept or decline any engagement, in whole or in part, for any reason. You are under no obligation to accept any minimum number of engagements or to be available at any particular time.

3.2 You are free to provide services to other clients, businesses and platforms, including competitors of Ceylon Seva, and to run your own business, at any time. Your engagement with Ceylon Seva is non-exclusive.

3.3 You control how the services are performed — the methods, means and sequence, and, subject to what you agree with a Client, the timing — using your own skill and judgement. Where the work requires tools or equipment, you generally provide your own.

3.4 You bear the commercial risk of your services, including the risk of non-acceptance of work, rectification of defective work at your own cost, and your own costs of doing business.

3.5 You will not hold yourself out as an employee, agent or representative of Ceylon Seva, will not wear Ceylon Seva uniform or insignia as if staff, and have no authority to bind Ceylon Seva.

4.1 You set or agree your service fee with the Client, or accept the rate presented for an engagement. The Client pays your service fee and the Platform's own fees separately. The current fee calculations are published in the Fee Structure at https://ceylonseva.work/fees; this Agreement does not restate the rates.

4.2 You pay no registration fee, subscription or platform deduction from your agreed service fee. The Worker's fee collected by Ceylon Seva is your income, not Ceylon Seva's revenue. Your entitlement against the Client is for the amount properly due for your services.

4.3 Ceylon Seva prepares Worker payouts weekly and remits amounts collected for you to your registered bank account after payment authorisation. Earnings shows when an amount is pending, payable or paid. Preparation of a payout is not confirmation of bank credit, and payment processing or a collection hold under clause 4.5 may delay it.

4.4 Review your recorded hours promptly. The billing week runs Monday to Sunday and its cut-off is Monday 02:00 Sri Lanka time. Confirmed days use the confirmed hours; eligible days neither confirmed nor disputed by the cut-off are accepted at scheduled hours. Raise any disagreement before the cut-off. A day you dispute is settled at the hours resolved or determined before the cut-off; if the dispute is still open at the cut-off it closes then and that day is settled at its scheduled hours — the hours scheduled for you when you accepted the engagement. Your hours are settled within their week: once a week has been settled, its days are not reopened, corrected or adjusted, and this applies whether the closing hours are higher or lower than the hours you say you worked. If you believe you worked hours beyond those settled, your claim for them is against the Client under your contract with the Client, and the support team can help you identify the relevant records. Nothing here limits rights under applicable law.

The last week of an engagement is treated differently, in your favour. In the final week — the week containing the last day you are scheduled to work — a dispute is never closed automatically, however long it stays open. That week is settled only once Ceylon Seva has decided every open dispute on it, so your final statement rests on hours a person has decided. Ceylon Seva will decide them without undue delay, and your final payment follows from that decision rather than waiting for the next weekly cycle.

4.5 Ceylon Seva is a collecting agent and does not guarantee Client payment or fund uncollected amounts. Additional earnings above the amount reserved for you are held until the corresponding Client payment clears. If an additional amount is not collected, Ceylon Seva does not pay that shortfall from its own money. A chargeback by a Client is different: it does not hold or reduce your pay for work settled under the Terms (clause 7.4), and if a chargeback is decided against Ceylon Seva, Ceylon Seva bears that loss, not you. Your claim for an uncollected service fee remains against the Client. The support team can help identify the relevant engagement and payment record.

4.6 If a Client cancels after securing the booking but before work begins, half of the retained matching-fee charge is allocated among the confirmed Workers under the Fee Structure. If the Client cancels after work has begun, the current billing week is payable at scheduled hours and the engagement ends at that week's end, subject to clause 4.5. A suspended, unworked refused week of an unpaid paused booking does not earn a Worker payment. Any separate discretionary payment considered for that situation is handled case by case and is not an automatic entitlement under this Agreement.

4.7 You are responsible for your own taxes, registrations and filings as an independent contractor. Ceylon Seva does not withhold employee tax or make statutory employment contributions for you.

5.1 Ceylon Seva may, at its sole and absolute discretion, operate a reward and recognition programme for Workers, funded from Ceylon Seva's own revenue. Ceylon Seva may publish factors it may take into account — such as engagements completed, customer ratings, completed-engagement milestones, repeat-client engagements, quality of completed services, the absence of substantiated complaints, and whether you have engagements or payments scheduled through the Platform — and may operate recognition tiers. Any such factors and tiers are illustrative only: they are not a formula, not a promise, and do not bind Ceylon Seva, which retains an overriding discretion to grant, withhold, vary or withdraw any reward in any case.

5.2 Any reward is an ex gratia payment, made voluntarily and as a matter of goodwill. It is not wages, not a statutory benefit (including EPF/ETF), not gratuity, not a profit share, and not a contractual or guaranteed entitlement of any kind. Participation is a privilege, not a right. Ceylon Seva may introduce, vary, suspend, discontinue or withdraw the programme, or any reward, factor or tier, at any time, with or without notice, in its sole discretion.

5.3 Ceylon Seva decides in its sole discretion whether to grant a reward. Once Ceylon Seva has determined a reward and notified it to you as payable, Ceylon Seva will pay it in accordance with the programme then in force. That payment discharges a determined award only; it does not create any entitlement to any future reward, and does not alter the ex gratia and wholly discretionary character of the programme described in clauses 5.1 and 5.2.

5.4 Ceylon Seva holds no funds on your behalf in connection with any reward; rewards are paid from Ceylon Seva's own funds. Nothing in this clause creates or evidences an employment relationship, and no reward affects your status as an independent contractor.

6.1 You will: provide true and current information; perform engagements competently, safely and lawfully and to the standard agreed with the Client; hold and maintain any licences, permits or qualifications your services require; comply with the Platform's published community standards and safety policies; and protect the confidentiality and personal data of Clients and others (clause 9).

6.2 You will not engage in unlawful, fraudulent, discriminatory, harassing or unsafe conduct, or anything that endangers users or the integrity of the Platform.

7.1 To protect trust and safety on the Platform, Ceylon Seva may set and publish marketplace quality and safety standards, operate a ratings system, and suspend, restrict or deactivate your access for breach of this Agreement, safety concerns, sustained poor ratings, substantiated complaints, or prolonged inactivity.

7.2 These standards and access conditions exist to maintain the integrity of the marketplace as a condition of using the Platform. They do not constitute direction or control by Ceylon Seva over the manner in which you perform services for any Client, and do not make Ceylon Seva your employer.

8.1 You are solely responsible for the services you provide and for your acts and omissions. As between you and Ceylon Seva, Ceylon Seva is not liable to any Client or third party for your services, and you will indemnify Ceylon Seva against claims, losses and expenses arising from your services, your breach of this Agreement, or your breach of law or another's rights.

8.2 You are responsible for arranging any insurance appropriate to your services.

8.3 Ceylon Seva does not insure you or the services you carry out through the Platform.

9.1 You will keep confidential, and use only to perform an engagement, any Client or Platform information you access, in accordance with applicable data-protection law, including the Personal Data Protection Act, No. 9 of 2022 (as amended), and our Privacy Policy.

9.2 Ceylon Seva and its group own all intellectual property in the Platform. You grant Ceylon Seva a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use the content you submit, such as your profile, ratings and work records, to operate and promote the Platform.

10.1 This Agreement applies while you have a Platform account. Either party may end it at any time, consistent with the at-will, non-exclusive nature of the relationship. Accrued payment obligations, and clauses 2, 5.2, 8, 9 and 11, survive termination.

11.1 This Agreement is governed by the laws of Sri Lanka, and the courts of Colombo have exclusive jurisdiction. If any provision is invalid, the remainder continues. This Agreement, with the Platform Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, is the entire agreement between you and Ceylon Seva regarding your provision of services through the Platform.