Past President, Hony. Life Fellow Eng. L.R.L. Perera has been recognized by His Excellency the President by awarding him the National Honour of Vidya Nidhi. He was sponsored by the Organisation of Professional Associations with a few others and has been selected by the Presidential Selections Committee. The Investiture Ceremony was held in March this year, after a lapse of 11 years at the Nelumpokuna Theatre.

This Award is for Meritorious, Scientific and Technological Achievements.

Previously, in the year 1986 he was decorated with the “Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette” by his Majesty, Emperor of Japan, again, for scientific achievement and technology development and he was the only person from South-East Asia to receive an award from his Majesty that year.

In the year 2013 Eng. Perera was awarded the National Engineering Apex Award by the OPA.

This year Eng. Perera’s association with the Institution comes to 70 years, having attended meeting in 1947 then held in the Technical College Auditorium as a First Year Engineering Student. He was a student member of the Engineering Association of Ceylon where the Student Section was chaired by Prof. E.O.E. Pereira and Secretary was Prof. Mahalingam.

Eng. Perera, after a two-year stint as an Instructor in Mechanical Engineering at the University, joined the Department of Agriculture where he went up to Deputy Director of Agriculture (Engineering), when he was transferred to the Government Factory Department at Kolonnawa as Director, from where he retired from Public Service.

He was once again called to State Service as Chairman of the State Engineering Corporation succeeding Dr. A.N.S. Kulasinghe. During this time he was called upon to take over the Business Undertaking of Colombo Commercial Company Engineers Limited and Heavyquip Ltd., where he functioned as Competent Authority.

Having left these assignments he formed his own company registered as Lekamage Associates (Private) Limited (Engineers and Architects) and did not go back to State Service although invited several times.

He was a founder member of FEISCA at Poona, in the year 1984. He has read papers at Annual Sessions of the Engineering Institutions of India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Also at an Annual Session of “Engineers Without Borders” held in University of Melbourne.

He was nominated to the World Federation of Engineering Organisations(WFEO) by FEISCA and WFEO in turn appointed him to the committee for Revision of the Constitution. Eng. Perera is a B.Sc., Engineering (Hons), London and had obtained Charters from the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, and a Fellow of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers, England.

Eng. Perera feels that this present award has been made especially for the development work he has done as an Engineer in the Department of Agriculture where he had patented two machines-

1. A Rubber Drum Thresher
   
   
2. An Automatic Transplanting Machine- where the women would not get wet in muddy fields when transplanting paddy.

His aim right from the beginning as an Agricultural Engineer was the upliftment of the farmer with mechanization to the level where the farmer could after a hard day’s work be quite clean and walk into a pub and enjoy a drink with friends, as in temperate countries. He, nevertheless, had in mind the value of the buffalo and did not encourage farmers using in hand-tractors etc., and doing away with the buffalo.

He also developed row-seeders and seeders for germinated paddy and did successful experiments in sod-seeding.

He manufactured a pre-fabricated grains silo which may still be standing at the Hingurakgoda Farm.

When the government decided to buy paddy by weight he, with his Eng. N. Kanesu, presently a Fellow of the Institution, built a platform weighing machine (AVERY type), the first to be built in Sri Lanka, at the Welisara Workshop. A local firm took over the manufacture of this machine.