Features

Dedicated and distinguished public officer, true patriot, friend of the downtrodden

Published

4 years ago

2021/10/3

Susil Sirivardana

I begin this tribute to a distinguished son of Sri Lanka with reference to the most magnificent accolade paid him by a Head of State. Susil was closely associated with the late President Premadasa in a housing program. Seeing him as an enthusiastic and dedicated officer, he once told Parliament that Susil Sirivardana was the most efficient and dedicated public officer he had ever worked with. I do not think any public officer has been so complimented by a Head of State in any country. I was closely associated with Susil when I was appointed an Asst. Secretary to the Ministry of Land, Irrigation and Power (M/LIP) and endorse President Premadasa’s compliment unequivocally.

Before I proceed to recall my working with Susil in M/LIP there was an incident, which I came to know through colleagues; in the examination for the intake of officers for the SLAS Susil was placed first in the written exam. An interview followed. He went for it in his customary national dress and slippers, carrying his documents in a reed bag (pan malla). Seeing him thus clad, a member of the interview board had asked whether Susil had a Sinhala degree from a Lankan university. Susil replied he had a First Class Honours degree in English from Oxford.

I’ve seen Susil’s desire to promote locally manufactured products at his home where the door curtains were of finely woven Dumbara mats rather than expensive imported material.

My close association with Susil needs explanation. The late Dudley Senanayake, following his father, realized the immense agricultural possibilities in Sri Lanka and its potential for youth employment. He therefore initiated the implementation of an islandwide Agricultural Youth Settlement Scheme both to promote the country’s agriculture and to demonstrate to youth that farming was a noble profession. The aim of this project was to make the country self sufficient in crops, not only rice but also subsidiaries like onions and chillies as well as spices like cardamoms.

The officers of M/LIP who administered this islandwide project were Messrs Cedric Foster and Susil Sirivardana. As District Land officer for the Kalutara District I had implemented three such projects, mainly for the cultivation of tea. Cedric decided to migrate to Australia and knowing my interest in the subject recommended me to the then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry to fill his vacancy. As a result Susil and I were in charge of implementing and administering the Agriculture Youth Settlement Project island wide.

In administering this project, Susil worked with such enthusiasm and energy that I found it difficult to keep pace. When I made visits to assess implementation and solve any problems that arose, I stayed in a government rest house or a reasonably priced hotel. Not so Susil; he stayed with the youth in the schemes not only to advice them but also to increase their commitment to the project. He often used the Sinhala term thrupthimath karanda (perfrom to the satisfaction of all). Susil had an excellent command of the Sinhala Language though his degree was in English from Oxford. Another excellent trait of Susil is that he treated all youth, whether Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim with the same respect and dignity. To him all citizens were sons of this country.

In implementing the AYSSP Project Sri Lanka received aid from a Dutch Organization ,referred in Dutch as N.O.V.I.B,(Novib), with Mr Von Vflyman beign the President and his representative in Sri Lanka being Miss Noyens. Novib gave technical assistance by making available the services of an irrigation engineer and an agriculture expert. Since only medium technology could be used in labour intensive agriculture, NOVIB funded the Import of Yanmar hand tractors from Japan. The Japanese Manufacturer, of these tractors, sent two technical persons to train the youth in the use and maintenance of the tractors. the World Food Progamme assisted the Scheme with the supply of several items of food .

Susil’s generosity was another trait which demonstrated his selflessness and his consideration for others, especially those in need. As I was administering the Project, Novib invited me to participate at a conference in the Hague on the subject of Youth in economic development. All costs involved ,including the air fare and hotel accommodation, were met by NOViB. This was at a time when the rigid close economy prevailed.. Anyone travelling abroad was entitled to British Pounds 3.50 only, and was permitted Pounds 50,for warm clothing, which was totally inadequate. I therefore had to purchase, the only warm clothing available in Sri Lanka, which were used clothing, known as “Bale”, as the import of such new clothing was banned. I did not have the funds even to purchase this “Bale”. Susil very generously financed me.

I was informed that Susil’s generosity led him unwittingly to be associated with the J.V.P. uprising in1971. According to unconfirmed reports, Susil ,being a patriot , desired to make available his talents to the unsophisticated rural folk out of the Colombo Metropolis. He therefore obtained a position in a rural school in the Anuradhapura district. Susil had befriended a person , perhaps another teacher, in the school he taught . This friend was in the process of constructing a house, but could not complete the house as he had run out of funds. It was reported that Susil gave his friend the money to complete the house. By some strange coincidence his friend was involved in the J.V.P. uprising. Susil being very methodical had kept records of monies he had lent to persons, with no intention of demanding repayment. I am aware of Susil keeping records, as Susil’s Father requested the return of the money lent to me as he had to employ lawyers for the legal case against Susil.

From my close association with Susil , I am convinced that Susil, due to his generosity and empathy for others, inadvertently came to be associated with the person, who had connections with J.V.P. sympathizers ,arising from his Anuradhapura connections. In my assessment Susil had no involvement with the insurrection . I was informed that there was some political pressure brought to bear on Susil’s been convicted, leading his incarceration. It was reported that Susil accepted his incarceration with his characteristic attitude of calm and composure. He refurbished the prison library at his expense and increased the stock of books there.

My close association with Susil in the M/LIP led to another incident. I lived at a place named Walana, close to the Panadura town. As at that time public officers were not entitled to official cars to travel from home to office, and were paid, what was called mileage, if their cars were used for official purposes. I had therefore to travel by bus to office. To permit me to do some reading, I used to take a bus to the Panadura town main bus stand, so that I could get a seat on the top deck of a double deck bus. On the day of the insurrection, there was a disruption in the bus services. and I boarded a single deck bus from near my residence at Walana junction, which is close to Panadura. At the Dehiwela bridge the bus was stopped at an army check point, and the passengers were asked to get off the bus. The army personnel, then searched the bus and a bomb was found under the seat where I was seated. It has to be noted that one place the J.V.P. had assembled its arsenal of bombs was at a cemetery in Panadura. All the passengers were detained. I informed the Officer in charge that I was the Deputy Controller of the Import and Export Control Dept. and I had to attend to some urgent office work. The Army Officer then permitted me to leave the place, and I boarded another bus to office.

When I was in my office , about an hour after I arrived, I had an anonymous telephone call asking me whether I could assist them , to transport bombs to several destinations. The fact the bomb in the bus was under my seat should have made the anonymous caller understand that no one will risk his life by carrying a bomb under his seat in the bus. I assumed the possibility that the Police gathered information, that I had worked with Susil. I was somewhat unnerved and I called the late D.I.G. Mr. Edward Gunewardene, my geography batch mate at the Peradeniya Unuversity. At that time Edward ( fondly called Edda at the University) was of the rank of Senior Superintendent of Police. He replied that he was assessing the situation countrywide and asked me to contact him if I had any problem. The need did not arise.

Generosity was a virtue in Susil’s family. I chaired a Committee at E.S.C.P. on the subject of the transposition of the Standard International Trade Classification (S.I.T.C) to the new Customs Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System ( The Harmonized System). The last two sessions on this subject were to be at the United Nations Statistical office in New York. E.S.C.P. nominated me to represent E.S.C.P at these sessions.

I had made arrangements to stay with a friend of mine who lived in the outskirts of New York. When I arrived in New York the entire transport system had come to a halt due to a strike in all the transportation sectors. Due to the strike and the difficulty of commuting to New York all rooms in the reasonably priced hotels were booked .Susil had given me his brother’s address and telephone No. I contacted him and he picked me up at the U.N.. Susil’s brother not only provided me with transport to and from the U.N., but also so kindly invited me to stay with him .

I had lost contact with Susil after my assignment in the World Customs Organization and I was Shocked that Susil had passed away, as Susil was very much younger to me.

The best Tribute we can pay to the memory of Susil is to tread in Susil’s footsteps of Dedication and commitment to duty; Patriotism ; Empathy and Humility.

Susil, though you have left us so suddenly the exemplary memories that you have left with us, will not only be etched in our hearts and minds, but also in the annals of History of your beloved Motherland.

Elmo de Silva

elmodesilva@email.com

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Features

Recruiting academics to state universities – beset by archaic selection processes?

Published

8 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

by Kaushalya Perera

Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).

How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities

Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).

* Lecturer (Probationary)

– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.

* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.

* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.

State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.

Problem type 1

– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria

Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.

This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!

Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education

A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.

Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.

At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.

Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.

The problem is clear but what about a solution?

Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:

* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.

* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.

* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)

Features

Talento … oozing with talent

Published

8 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Talento: Gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band

This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.

Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.

Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.

The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.

The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication

Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.

Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.

The musicians, who make up Talento, are:

Prabuddha Geetharuchi:

Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist

Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento

(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.

Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):

A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.

Chandana Perera (Drummer):

His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.

Harsha Soysa:

(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band

Udara Jayakody:

(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.

Aruna Madushanka:

(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.

Prashan Pramuditha:

(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..

Features

Special milestone for JJ Twins

Published

8 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Twin brothers Julian and Jason Prins

The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’

In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!

‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.

This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.

It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.

Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.

Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial

TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic

Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers

YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins