We all know that recently IESL received the full signatory status of the Washington Accord and you will be getting more news in a special SLEN dedicated to that.

However, when I circulated this message among my friends, some of them asked me a very simple question; “what is Washington Accord?”

This really reflects the awareness that our engineers do have and it opens up the eyes of everybody whether IESL has updated its membership with what has been happening.

IESL had worked towards obtaining this recognition from the Washington Accord for many years with the state sector universities. It is evident that there has been a lapse of communication and it caused this lack of awareness.

SLEN will try to fill the gap with lot of information on this Washington Accord from IESL and also from the overseas, especially from Australia. The special SLEN will cover all this information including the requirements of the signatory status, benefits after obtaining this recognition, and very importantly what are the conditions that we have to fulfill to maintain the signatory status.

Further, I would like to discuss another approach that India had tried as they also received the same status on the same day with us.

This is from the Times of India, 14th June 2014. “Boost for engineers: India now part of Washington Accord”. It further says, “After years of effort and several failures, India finally became the 17th member of the exclusive Washington Accord on Friday. It will help create equivalence of engineering degree programmes and allow Indians to practice engineering in other member countries”.

Business Standard on 14th June 2014 described it as “Boost for engineers: India a permanent member of Washington Accord- This would mean global recognition of Indian engineering degrees and increase the mobility of engineers to the USA and other countries for jobs”

This is just to show how they have attracted the general public with the media. We have been following an engineering approach, but to win the hearts and minds of general public, we have to approach the public differently.

Udeni Nawagamuwa
nawagamuwa@gmail.com