Features
Returning to Sri Lanka, becoming MD of Reckitt’s in SL at age 33 and then Chairman
(Excerpted from the memoirs of Lalith de Mel)
He returned to a Sri Lanka going through a difficult phase due to the JVP uprising. There were curfews and a sense of fear in the air. His predecessor in Sri Lanka had a young family and was glad to get away from the chaos that prevailed and left a few days before he returned.
There was the usual tension that prevails when a colleague becomes the boss. He left for Brazil as a colleague and returned as the boss. This was short-lived as it was not a complete surprise and they probably expected it to happen.
He had a very relaxed style. No ties, short-sleeved shirt to work, and coloured tunic top and sarong in the evenings (he still does this) and everyone was asked to call everyone including the MD by their first name. This was a big change. The foreign MDs wore a jacket and tie but took the jacket off when they got to their office. The immediate direct reports referred to the MD as ‘Mister’. No first names.
A difficult economic environment
During his entire period as Managing Director, there was a difficult external environment. The Trotskyis version of Marxists had joined Mrs. Bandaranaike’s Government and were destroying the economy. They pushed through land reform, a ceiling on housing, and the nationalization of the estates. It was done in a hurried and unplanned fashion and instead of leading to a resurgence in economic activity, it led to a collapse of the economy. Import licences for raw materials were restricted, leaving no room for new activities and expansion
Pharmaceuticals
Over the years he had developed a special affinity for pharmaceuticals. He worked closely with the UK Pharmaceutical division which provided support and guidance to the overseas businesses. He had regular technical discussions with them about creating promotional material for doctors and whenever there was a pharmaceutical conference anywhere in the Group he was invited to attend.
This letter from the UK Group Director responsible for Pharmaceuticals illustrates their respect for him as a pharmaceutical man.
“Your letter reference 349 of June 2 on the merits of Disprin in comparison with ordinary Aspirin has been the subject of close and detailed study by myself and my colleagues in the Pharmaceutical Division. I apologize for the length of time it has taken to reply to it but I can assure you that this is rather a mark of the seriousness with which the matter has been approached rather than of neglect.
“There is little doubt that your efforts in Sri Lanka with some assistance from the UK have succeeded in producing the best possible case for Disprin based on all available evidence. So effective is it, in fact, that the Pharmaceutical Division is itself adopting much of it incorporation in their own activity.”
This was the start of being recognized as very competent pharmaceutical man and from then on he worked with them as a member of the top pharmaceutical team whilst performing his various regional director roles. This eventually resulted in his appointment as the Group Director for Worldwide Pharmaceuticals.
The pharmaceutical industry was under attack. Prof Bibile had a plan that he fortunately could not implement. His plan did not make good sense. His plan to ban brand names completely was nonsensical. A person wanting a bottle of Dettol would have had to ask for Chloroxylenol solution. His concept of a limited formulary of drugs was shot down by the medical profession. When all this was floundering, his grand plan was to make the multinational pharmaceutical companies contract manufacturers for his State Pharmaceutical Corporation. They were summoned for a meeting chaired by Dr. N.M. Perera.
He was then Chairman of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. After consulting their respective parent companies, they had adopted a common position. Despite being harangued and threatened by Dr. N.M. Perera, the manufacturers flatly refused to manufacture for Prof. Bibile. Then Bill Williams, Managing Director of the Pfizer business, pointed out forcefully that if they were not paid full, fair, just and equitable compensation, the US Hickenlooper Amendment would kick in, which would prevent the USA providing aid in any form to Ceylon.
There was a stunned silence and then Dr. Perera proclaimed that the industry would be nationalized. Nothing happened thereafter. It was an end to the fanciful dreams of Prof Bibile, who then left our shores and died shortly thereafter.
The Marxists were kicked out of the Government but the economy continued to struggle. He continued what he had been doing before he went to Brazil, namely growing the brands, but he had to move out of the seat of driving brands as a Marketing Director.
However, he kept his finger on marketing as in those times it was very much a command and control culture. Managing Directors gave directives and management executed them. There was discussion and senior managers had the opportunity to express their views but there was no delegation of key decision-making.
An interesting diversion from the difficult business environment was the marketing of condoms. The International Planned Parenthood Federation in the UK wanted to experiment with mass marketing of condoms. They were available at that time all over the world, but only in pharmacies. To make an impact in terms of birth control, it was important to make them available through the retail network.
The IPPF had identified Ceylon as the market to test this concept. They had persuaded Anandatissa de Alwis who had an advertising agency to take on the advertising for this project. Ananda who was an old friend then approached him and wanted him to participate in developing the marketing concept and wanted Reckitt & Colman to handle the distribution. He (Lalith) was quite convinced that it was a good social marketing project but he had the daunting task of getting approval from the lords and masters in the UK.
So he wrote them a nice letter and was pleased that they were very positive and gave the OK to market condoms in Sri Lanka. Now they agonized over a name and the name eventually selected was Preethi. He returned home and told his wife that at long last they found a name and it was Preethi. She smiled and reminded him that it was her first name, and so he had said, “Now you’ll be famous, your name will be on every packet of condoms!”
The project was very successful. IPPF was very pleased. From then on condoms have been freely available in the retail network. He was very happy to have been a part of this campaign.
They were difficult times and they had to look for various innovative ideas to grow the business. One such project was to export charcoal for barbecues to New Zealand.
He was very keen to market bottled water but he could not convince Corporate HQ in UK that this was a feasible proposition. Looking at what has happened with bottled water, it was a tragedy that it was not implemented. During this time he played an active role with a few others to create the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM). He was the third President of SLIM.
Reckitt & Colman of Ceylon was a public company and when he was the Managing Director, the Chairman of the company was John West, who was the Chairman of Reckitt & Colman of India. He came four times a year for Board Meetings. But in 1975, it was decided that the Indian Chairman need not visit and Lalith was made the Chairman of the company. That was the first time a Sri Lankan was a Chairman of a multinational company in Sri Lanka. He reported to a Regional Director based in Corporate HQ, which by then had moved from Hull to London.
He visited the business from time to time and so did various corporate staff. His Regional Director reported to Ted Wright, the Main Holding Board Director responsible for all the overseas businesses.
Ted Wright was of course a powerful individual in the Group and he too would visit overseas businesses. He made a visit to the businesses in the sub-continent and came to Sri Lanka when he was Chairman. When Lalith next went to Corporate HQ on one of his regular visits, he was asked to see Ted Wright. After a little chat about the business and the country, he was asked whether he would come and work at Corporate HQ in London.
He was very happy in Sri Lanka. He had no problems managing the business and there were early signs that there could be a change of government in the offing with a new government that was supportive of the private sector.
But he realized he could not continue to be Chairman of Reckitt & Colman Sri Lanka forever and that if he didn’t move, after a few years they would probably want to have a new head for the Sri Lankan business. So with some reluctance he agreed to move to the UK. At that time he was not sure about his exact job. He was told the grade, which was one rung below a main board director and that the role would be at Corporate Headquarters. So he had many discussions with various people including Ted Wright in London and the final decision was that he would be appointed a Regional Director in London and he would take over the role from his then boss.
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.)
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..
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
Dry weather will prevail in most parts of the island
Socialist Alliance expresses concern over GoSL’s growing military ties with US
FSP proposes self-governing regions, bicameral legislature to address national issue
GMOA decides to intensify its trade union struggle
SLMC condoles the passing of Khamenei, urges restraint and condemn GoSL stance
Hoarders run riot; govt. all at sea
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
Sunday Island 27 December – Headlines
#SundayIsland 17th December – Headlines
Sunday Island – 28th March
Sunday Island Headlines – 21 March
Sunday Island – 21st February – Headlines
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