President's Message

Dear Members and Readers,

As the President-Elect for the session 2021/22 and the Acting President of the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka, I am honored to post my thoughts through this Newsletter, for the first time. Considering the prevailing situation we all are faced with, I decided to share my thoughts on the present crisis, though we hear enough of it day in and day out.

As we all observe, currently, our motherland is in the throes of economic collapse. The crisis situation that originated as a financial crisis has subsequently resulted in political instability and finally, now we are surrounded by a multiple crises situation.

As responsible citizens of this country, we find that the current crisis that we experienced today is one of the most challenging periods in the country’s known history. Fuel and food scarcity, Hours-long power cuts, and social unrest leading to street protests disturbing the social life, etc. are becoming regular features of life day by day.

We, being a nation, passing through cyclic crises throughout history, are a little bit resilient to crises, most, from the Silent Generation down to Millennials have previous experience of crisis situations with varying scales, while our young members of the generations down from Millennials it is a kind of first time in their history. Nevertheless, irrespective of the generation, the current crisis situation shows signs of a new situation and also alarms of much disturbing period yet to face ahead.

As a result of the current crisis, we are, inter alia in a state of defaulting on foreign debt repayment for the first time in our history. The Financial heads in the Treasury have fallen to the level of depending on the “daily Dollar collection” to pay for our food, medicines, fuel, and other basic necessities shipments queued up in the harbour. No wonder, the fate of a nation used to live depending totally on imports and fewer exports economy.

It is also opinioned that the crisis currently faced by the country is mainly attributed to economic mismanagement by the successive governments since independence and finally aggravating the situation during the last few years with the impacts of the COVID -19 pandemic, such as diminishing foreign remittances and reduced income from tourism. On top of that came the adverse results of some inappropriate policy decisions untimely made relevant to the financial, agriculture, and power & energy sectors.

The causes of the current crisis are being discussed in different forums by political leaders and the financing experts and already the public finger is pointed mainly towards the political hierarchy as the main respondent.

As Engineers, it is a timely need for us to question ourselves whether our past performance has also made any contributions to the current crisis and if so what should our future action be in coming out of this critical juncture and helping the nation. Can we simply say that we engineers have got nothing to do with the current state of the nation and held only the Politicians, economists, and others solely responsible for the crisis?

In my opinion, the answer to the above is a big NO and it is high time for us to revisit the role we play with respect to the country’s affairs. Let’s focus on the country’s Debt crisis, a major cause of the current crisis and which has direct roots in the engineering and engineering profession. On the other hand, maneuvering the unbearable external borrowings the country has made during the last several decades hitting the rock bottom is the toughest challenge to overcome. Unbelievably, some of these borrowings are on commercial lending scales and they have been used to finance infrastructure projects with either no immediate returns or on projects which could not be prioritized in any aspect compared to the country’s priority needs. Interestingly, some of those projects have been agreed upon on unsolicited basis, deviating from procurement principles in broad daylight and at exorbitantly high prices. It is also noted that some of those projects could not yet reach completion due to technical and contractual issues faced with.

As per the established engineering norms, it is the accepted practice to prioritize, conduct pre-feasibility studies, feasibility studies, assess financial viability, etc before deciding on any project, irrespective of the nature or the scale. Then complying with the established procurement formalities is the next accepted and proper way in the final implementation stage.

However, when looking at the some of the recently implemented infrastructure projects in this country those now have become a burden to the nation, naturally one tends to question how on earth, this type of situation could arise in a country where well-established regulations and mechanisms are in place and also blessed with a well-qualified professional engineering community to drive?

Does it mean that such projects have been implemented without getting any input from engineers, who are the drivers in such processes? Or the wrong practices were exercised against the engineer’s wish or the engineers did not bother when such wrong practices were taking place! These are the questions we need to ask ourselves immediately.

While we revisit our stand in the past as a priority, we Engineers, as the drivers in many sectors of the nation, need to come forward at this need of the hour.

We, the engineering community comprising a little over 20,000 qualified engineers spread throughout the island, from north to south and east to west, and standing under the umbrella of our mother body, the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka, should not be an under harvested treasure any further.

The country's current crisis situation urgently needs the expertise and wisdom of engineers, and I believe it is our duty to rise to the occasion.

Let’s use the crisis to make a strong comeback and build the nation!

 

Eng. (Dr.) Kamal Laksiri
BScEng.(Hons), MSc, PhD, FICE, FASCE, MIET, MASME, CEng, FIE(SL), IntPE(Sri Lanka)

Acting President/ President-Elect 2021/2022