Dear Members,

I assumed the duties as IESL president for session 2015/.2016, during the AGM held on 24th Oct 2015.

It is a great pleasure for me to become the President of the 110 years young Prestigious Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka after serving in the council from 1999, almost after 15 years.

I would like to thank all the IESL members, they helped me in this long journey and ultimately placed their trust on me and elevated me to this prestigious post of IESL as President. I hereby give my fullest assurance that I will maintain the highest standards of this post to serve our membership with the support of the Council for the Sessions 2015/2016 with your corporation.

It is discussed in various forums that we, Engineers have lost our status in the society due to various reasons. But our engineers are contributing tremendously for the development of the country in a sustainable manner. During my 40 years spell of service I realized that even though we Engineers served the people in the best of standards the society is not appreciating our yeomen service, may be due to lack of understanding of our contribution.

Popularization of engineering among community is the most viable strategic solution to recover our lost prestige. Frist of all the we engineers must have respect among ourselves within the engineering fraternity and exchange our views, findings and proposed works of our development in various disciplines and discuss regularly the impact of those development activities among Engineers. In 1906, the Association of Engineers formed in NCP achieved the same objectives.

The decentralization of IESL activities to provincial chapters is primarily targeted towards creating corporation among provincial engineers and popularize the Engineering among local communities. The Planning Circles have been introduced to Provincial Chapters and District Centers to share the knowledge of engineers and to discuss the development works for better understanding and establishing a common vision among engineers about engineering activities to perform works efficiently.

Keeping that in mind under the present scenario of good governance and right to information to general public we have to use the opportunity to show our public how engineers are working to develop the country in a sustainable manner taking into account economic factors etc and how the people are benefited from Engineers works while maintaining our professional standards. In that manner we can very soon earn our lost prestige if any.

Eng. W. Gamage
President of IESL