Sri Lanka needs to address key issues with regard to skills shortage and educational reforms. Career guidance programs directing the young generation to harness skills are essential to meet job market demands and the country should have a better dialogue when it comes to the signing of free trade agreements to reap the maximum benefit, President, Organisation of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka (OPA), Lalith A.P. Wijetunge said.
“The professionals should be given the opportunity to enter Parliament through the national list. They could serve the country better with their wealth of knowledge and expertise. The political parties should allocate 50 percent of the national list nominations to professionals to fast track the country’s development,” he said in an interview with Business Observer.
However, he said that the government should look in to pressing needs such as skill gap that will have adverse impact on the country’s growth trajectory in the near future and take necessary action to address this issue immediately.
“We have organised our annual conference under the theme ‘Innovative Digitalisation’ to discuss the importance of keeping abreast with the latest developments in the world and the proceedings of the conference will be published and submitted to the government for consideration. As there will be eminent speakers the country will benefit from its outcome,” he said.
Excerpts:
Q. What is the objective of the annual conference this year?
A. The Annual Conference of the Organisation of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka (OPA) will be held on September 26 and 27 2018 at Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, Colombo on the theme ‘Innovative Digitalisation’. This Annual Conference which is the biggest event in the OPA calendar is being held for the 31st consecutive year and culminates the activities of the OPA for the year 2017/2018.
The inaugural ceremony of the annual conference will be held on Wednesday, September 26 and President Maithripala Sirisena will grace the occasion as the chief guest.
The keynote speaker will be Dr. D. Prasanth Nair, Managing Partner and Country Head, InHelm, India. Ajith P. Perera, State Minister of Power and Renewable Energy will be the guest of honour. The Technical Sessions will be held on Thursday, September 27 at the same venue. A number of eminent personalities will make presentations on subjects of their expertise.
The Organisation of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka was established in 1975, mooting the idea of a joint professional body, to cater to the country’s growing need of professional opinion. The OPA is now in its 43rd year and is the Apex Body consisting of 49 Member Associations representing 32 Professions such as Engineering, Medicine, Accountancy, Architecture, Human Resource Management, Banking, etc. with a combined Membership exceeding over 60,000. Over the years the OPA has grown into a powerful Civil Society consisting of an impressive list of professionals in various fields, whose outreach is extensive.
To ensure a broader participation the OPA started the Annual Conference, of which the first one was held in 1988. Since then the OPA has organized 30 Annual Conferences under various themes and policy papers were also submitted to the government for the inclusion in the National Policy and Budget.
Each year the Conference focuses on a timely theme that is of vital importance to the country as a whole as well as the professionals. This year’s theme is ‘Innovative Digitalisation’ which is of great relevance in the present context when the government is engaged in a development program for the country with emphasis on innovation and digitalisation.
Q. What are the subjects you will focus on?
A. Developments in new digital technology offer new opportunities to innovate in designing new products and services to satisfy the changing societal needs.
However, for those engaged in such tasks, creating such products and services may create new issues and challenges that will have to be addressed effectively.
Digitisation in today’s world has become a must to every type of business for survival and growth, as it facilitates continuous development whil being cost efficient.
Innovation may mean changing your business model completely and adapting to changes in your own environment to deliver better products or services to cater to the new and continuously evolving demands.
Thanks to the digitisation we can choose how to work, when to work and where to work to cope up with our busy lifestyles. Data being stored on digital media and devices, we can easily transform and access them from anywhere.
Technological progress and digitisation has made it possible to adjust work schedule to suit our personal preferences. Many new business models are produced though digitalisation, and innovation comes in to play when new ideas through strategic thinking results in building something brand-new and completely different. As Professionals it is our duty to be innovative to provide mother Lanka the benefits of a new digitalised era.
Q. Any particular reason to choose these areas?
A. All sub-themes under the theme ‘Innovative Digitalization’ are connected to various professions and industries to bring out the best methods or models which could be incorporated into the business world to make an impact on the lives of Sri Lankan people.
Sri Lanka has been a third world country for the past so many years. It is our sincere hope that through this year’s OPA Annual Conference, Sri Lanka will be able to come up with ideas and solutions using Innovative Digitalisation and move forward towards the dawn of a new world.
The technical sessions will comprise of three sessions. Session I will be on Powering Infrastructure Development Digitally, Modernisation of Transportation and Infrastructure Development and towards a Digitalised New Business Era.
Session II will be on A Blue Print for a Digital Economy, IOT Initiatives for Technological Innovations and Productivity Technological Innovation for Economic Development. Session III will be on Digitalisation for Human Capital Development, Innovation a core strategy for Digital HR and Building New Digital HR Platforms. These three sessions will be followed by an interactive session in the form of a panel discussion.
Many intellectuals and senior professionals both locally and internationally are expected to attend these technical session followed by a panel discussion.
As in the past the proceedings of the Annual Conference will be published and made available to the members as well as the general public. The outcome of the Technical Sessions will be submitted to the Government of Sri Lanka, for its consideration.
Q. What do you hope to achieve through the conference?
A. We place special emphasis on the forthcoming national conference as we have decided to discuss very timely topic of Innovative Digitalisation which will be a key factor in the country’s development agenda.
The second day of the conference will be technical sessions. We have identified the presenters representing various professions and eminent personalities, experts in their respective professions.
The annual conference is the flagship event of the OPA and end of the conference OPA will submit a comprehensive report to the government with the subjects which were discussed at the conference and our proposals to implement those to the betterment of the future generation.
We as OPA strongly believe that we will have to go with the current trend of the world. We can not be isolated. Dititalisation is an important key to minimize waste and improve efficiency.
Q. What are your duties and responsibilities in educating people with regard to national issues?
A. We plan to create a dialogue on national issues and current affairs. We discuss and submit our proposals to the government to take necessary action, especially with regard to the recently developed issues such as the education system and agriculture issues. We also proposed to the government of a composition of a scientific Cabinet limiting it to 30 ministers.
Q. Do you actively participate in government advisory boards?
A. The OPA was established to fulfill the gap of Senate which we had over four decades ago. We had a lot of discussions with the government when there are nationally important issues such as educational reforms, constitutional reforms, signing of free trade agreements and agricultural policy of the country.
We have invited respective ministers and high officials of the government to our office and discus and submit our proposals to them. We regret to inform that we are not happy with the acceptance of our representations for making policies of the government.
In the recent past, we wrote to all party leaders and the government requesting to allocate 50 percent of our members in their national list of Parliamentarians.
We understand that our current Parliament has a scarcity of professionals representing respective professions.
Our suggestion will be a good solution to fill that gap as our members are representing 32 professions and excel in their respective professions.
A majority of them are having wealth of experience both local and overseas. They are not politically biased and corruption free too. We all know that the general public is not happy about the selection criterion of national list of all political parties and the concept of the national list as a system which has not fulfill by any of the political parties as at today.
We urgently request the government to do a constitutional amendment and emphasizes national list shall be at least 50 percent from membership of OPA.
Q. How do you propose to educate the media to play a proper role in disseminating information to the public?
A. We believe the media can play a key role to create awareness on general public regarding the role of OPA of Sri Lanka. The OPA is well aware of the current scarcity of skills of various fields.
We have conducted a research and we understand the major issue is unawareness of the general public and available avenues to develop their skills. Especially the school leavers, they are not aware of what they should do after leaving school at various stages.
Those who are after Advanced Level examination their dream is to enter in to a national university which can accommodate only 23,000 per annum.
In our career guidance unit conducts programs in various parts of the country with collaboration with the government educating the school leavers in different levels as to how they can progress in their careers.
Most of our member associations are conducting professional courses in respective professions for school leavers to get the professional qualifications.
For example, the Chartered Institute of Accountants conducts program for accountants, the Institute of Personnel Management conduct programs for human resources managers. There are 25 institutions of our membership that serves the country’s development and our young generation in providing career guidence.
Q. What is your contribution to the upcoming budget?
A. Every year we submit our proposals to the national budget and some of them have been implemented.
We are very proud to mention that we were the pioneers to propose to the government to abolish the taxes from the Employees Provident Fund and Employees Trust Fund which were taxed at the retirement from the employees of the private sector service. We have submitted our proposals this year as well.
Q. Your views on increasing professionalism and training young people?
A. The country has a huge scarcity of young skills to the development of the country. Although, we have a lot of facilities such as Technical Colleges and Training Centres all over the country, all these institutions are struggling to attract young blood to develop them to meet the needs of the job market.
We understand that almost all the institutions are having enough vacancies for skilled employees, but no adequate numbers as we are not producing to meet the demand.
We have requested from the government to introduce incentives and conduct career guidance programs at school level and implement educational reforms to develop skills in various fields to meet the demand.
If the government fails to take this step immediately, we have no option other than to import labour to fill the vacancies or curtail future development programs.
We have stressed this fact to the government authorities during the past decade.
We understand that all governments have taken some measures, but not adequate to meet the demand. We need to take action fast as the consequences will be greater in the future.