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Since 1983 the local hotel industry has gone through many ups and downs, too many that it is surprising it has survived at all. The civil unrest of the late eighties and numerous events that led up to the bombing of the Bandaranaike International airport in early 2001 culminated to a point of many hotels retrenching its staff and going in to low key operational schedules. So it was inevitable that most of the workers sought employment elsewhere not merely to better their prospects as much as to survive.

Chef Pubilis, Director Culinary Art and Promotions in front of the Mount Lavinia Hotel.

However it was a very noticeable trend to find that many hotel employees, specially kitchen and restaurant staff made their way to other destinations overseas, notably to the middle-east, after they have worked for some time at a local hotel and got their service period in order. Girls who were taken in as stewardesses never lasted for too long in their jobs. They either found employment in another country as their male counterparts or got married to foreigners who were guests in the hotels they worked at. This may be one reason why less of female restaurant staff are seen at hotels these days.

Owing to the many reasons since 1983 the Ceylon Hotel School which is considered an institution which trained and groomed many of Sri Lanka's leaders for the hotel industry eventually became an office where students enrolled themselves to be certified on paper together with a 6 month training stint at a leading hotel after which their ambition of seeking employment abroad was fulfilled. This trend has been continuously going on over the years and is happening even today.

Today hoteliers have opened up to the fact that they have to retain their staff even if they are not products of the Ceylon Hotel School and one notices a lot of restaurant staff are from the surrounding areas of the hotels. These young boys and girls are products of regional schools and educated in the local tongue and scarce in their knowledge of English but they are doing a great job and are very attentive to the guests be it local or foreign. This is a contrast from some of the experiences that hotel guests [mostly the local ones] accounted for in earlier occasions, specially taking into consideration the many local travellers that used to patronise out-station resorts during those periods that most hotels lacked overseas arrivals.

It is not a secret that most hotel employees depend on the service charge that they receive in addition to their monthly wages and every time that a threatening incident occurred and tourism got effected as a result the service charge catapulted downwards to unbelievable depths. This was one of the reasons that made most of these employees flee from their jobs.

Progressing talent: Miss Sri Lanka for Miss Tourism International 2002 Anoja de Mel being accompanied on stage by a youth who hails from down South and works as an Animator at the Golden Sun Resort, Waskaduwa.

This was also a reason why they disliked local patrons at the hotels as most of them were lured into the vacations tie up to a package, some of them on very low scale rates, which enabled hotels to at least meet their operational costs but did not meet up with the regular service charge rates the employees were used to earning and they badly needed. So the indifference set in.

Since the signing of the peace accord tourist arrivals to the country has had an upward trend and hotels are gearing up to face the challenge but they feel the pinch of not having 'qualified staff'. This is not true from the visitors point of view. Present day's stewards are an efficient lot.

They don't differ from their earlier `certified' counterparts and are a more friendly lot and well trained by their supervisors to attend to their guests' needs promptly.

This year's 'Culinary Art 2003' brought into the limelight many village boys trained under qualified chefs presenting their recipes in form of a variety of foods (see the recipe corner of today's Women's page). Most of them were able to walk away with gold medals proving their ability to excel in a field which once was the niche of the city boys armed with a certificate from the Ceylon Hotel School or some other recognised institute on the subject.

This brings `Pubilis' into focus, the icon of the local culinary field that has taken our very own cooking methods and recipes to further parts of the world. Pubilis started as a boy who supplied the kitchen fires with coal to keep it aglow and later cleared the same to put off the flames.

"There were no chefs in those days" said the grand old master, "only Kokiyas, I had to slave under them for over three years to become a 'handy boy' (ath udavu karaya)" says Pubilis humbly. After serving as a Grade-I helper [which was equivalent to a III-Commis of today] for over 4 years Pubilis who stepped into the Mount Lavinia Hotel's kitchen in 1956 set on the path of trail blazing himself into the field of culinary excellence that in no way can be compared below 'par'.

Pubilis who is the Director of Culinary Art and Promotions of the Mount Lavinia Hotel today, has survived three major ownerships upto date.

The hotel which was under the ownership of Ceylon Tours at the time of his joining it in 1956 changed hands in 1969 to a proprietorship headed by Farouque Salih and again in 1975 came under the ownership of the Ukwatte's with Sanath Ukwatte at the helm of things today.

"I too came across numerous offers that could have been tempting for a person like me that had a mild beginning in the industry" explains Pubilis. It might have been no easy task declining those offers as they have come his way at a time when our own hotel industry was going down the drain.

Not for this man who had plans to up-grade the culinary patterns of the country which he was born to. May he be a guiding light to the many village boys and girls that have already joined in to learn and serve and to others who envisage a career in this noble industry.

It is indeed a noble one, otherwise we will not find a small village boy named Pubilis who started 47 years ago and trained over 2500 to 3000 Chefs and cooking assistants that came under his wing seated on his throne today.

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