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Ja-Ela Group Correspondent

We should immediately start a programme to educate school children on the different technologies pursued by the National Engineering Research and Development Centre (NERD) as the technological advancements experimented at the NERD Centre is not second to any other country, said Keheliya Rambukwella, Minister of Science and Technology at the opening of the Centre for Manufacturing Excellence (CME).

The purpose of setting up the CME is to fill the technological gap and to assist the die and mould making industry to expand the range of products, improve quality and meet customer deliver targets.

Rambukwelle said that though Sri Lanka is considered to have one of the highest literacy rates in Asia, the technological awareness is low. Though a large number is literate, there was a large number of unemployed persons in the country and this rate could be attributed to the low technological awareness. He urged the NERD Centre to consider this appalling situation and to take the technological awareness to the schools. He said that to accommodate such a situation, the NERD would provide boarding facilities. By now more than 3,000 students have participated in the awareness programmes.

Minister of Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Refugee Affairs Dr. Jayalath Jayawardene said that it is of great concern that a large number of factories in the Ekala Industrial Estate emit untreated water contaminated with poisonous substances and they all flow to the Ja-Ela canal polluting the entire canal. NERD Chairman Ranjan Rodrigo said that the Centre employed 400 and among them 50 were science graduates. Twenty among the 50 were qualified in technology.

All the employees were well experience in their own fields. He said 25 patent certificates for various technological inventions have already been issued. He said that they have been working on projects on priority basis to generate biogas to meet a part of the electricity requirements while helping to preserve the environment. He said that most of the achievements the NERD Centre made were shared with the people and in the future too serving the people would be their prime aim.

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