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by Sumi Moonesinghe

Address given to the society of structural engineers on the occasion of felicitating the engineering guru of our country A. N. S. Kulasinghe.

Can you visualise a world without engineers? We will still be using the abacus and not the computers or sophisticated calculators, no modes of transportation by sea, air or road other than what the stone age man used, no conference calls, no scud or patriot missiles, no surveillance aircraft, no eavesdropping on conversations of people in far away places.

Most of all no telephone without which I would have been a very unhappy person, I have telephonitis. I worship Alexander Graham Bell three times a day!

Why I am saying this is to remind you what an important profession you are in. Are you making an impact on the decision making process of our country? Is your voice heard by those who matter?

Are you involved in master planning? How much of involvement did your body have in drafting the Regain SL document which is the basis of the development of our country for the next decade or more?

If your voice is not heard then shall we look at ourselves inwardly and find out what went wrong. Everyday we hear complaints about the lack of proper infrastructure within our country to achieve the 8 to 10 per cent growth that we want to achieve.

About six months ago I attended a seminar where the sec of highways stated that our country does not have a ten year plan for the development of a network of roads which is the backbone for development. Who should be preparing this master plan? All of you may say its responsibility of the government planners NO I beg to differ.

Why can't the engineers prepare this plan on their own and approach the donor agencies and the fund managers to put together a package that the government just cannot ignore. In this way GOVT only acts as the facilitator and regulator by assisting this consortium with land acquisitions and other necessary approvals.

This may sound very simple but it's not so. It's tremendous amount of work, but that's how it has to be done. During the year I have been Chairman of the BoC I have had many fund managers inquiring about investment opportunities. But I did not have any bankable documents to give them.

We go from country to country with road shows promoting our country an ideal place to invest. But what are the projects, its only engineers who can prepare the project reports and now most of our young engineers have studied accountancy and they are very competent to prepare a bankable document and raise the money for these projects.

City National an investment bank with engineers qualified in accountancy and banking is one such example. But there is room for many more. How many have thought of mortgage back securities. The revenue of any project can be securitised with a mortgage of the assets to release the much needed cash or expansion.

The airport and the port are excellent examples. We always talk of not having money to do things. But its only because we do not know how to convert dead assets to live capital. If only you securutise the revenue stream of the airport with a mortgage backed security all the money you need for the expansion of the airport can be raised.

Our country only need the knowledge and if we incentivise our children who have been very successful in the west, to return home and offer them market salaries and empower them I am sure they will return.

The most prestigious travel magazine Conde Nast traveller had our beautiful country on its cover page two months ago. We have such natural beauty we must harness this. It's only engineers who can come up with the list of improvements necessary to attract the tourists to our country starting from the airport and then the highway to the city, ring roads to avoid towns.

We are an island nation and the Dutch left us a network of canals which can be converted into water transport. Why don't we have ferry services to all the main coastal cities? HK which built a very impressive network of highways linking to mainland China now must be having ferries which are idling.

May be we can get their assistance and you engineers can design the jetty terminals and the other facilities by coping from other countries. Everyday we are having about problems in the transport sector and its only you engineers who can solve these problems.

One of the major problems you have is inability to access capital. Why are we always waiting for the government to do things for us. Remember what John F. Kennedy said.

Of course now you will ask me where are we going to get the funding to produce these feasibility studies and bankable documents.

All you have to do is to convince the donor community who pledged a massive 4.5 bil dollars in aid to initially part with just ten million dollars towards this exercise. Once the bankable documents are available with good return on investment, the investment bankers will raise the funding through road shows.

Most of you engineers have tremendous experience having worked in the Railway, Electricity Board, Highways, Port and Buildings Department and because of the rules and regulations in government you have not been able to really prove what you are capable of. Even when road projects are handled by foreign contractors, they always use local talent. May be we need skills input with latest technology but the actual doers are our local professionals.

If you decide to leave government service and form yourselves into companies and participate in the tenders announced by the ADB and JBIC and similar institutions, in competition with the foreign contractors, you may run the risk of getting rejected at the beginning itself, due to your company being new with no track record, lack of equity capital, and non-availability of financial backing to provide performance bonds and advance payment guarantees.

What can you do? The banks will not lend you money unless you have a credit worthy partner, that's why recently a company engaged in power generation had to form a joint venture to bid for the power plant in competition with world class companies and won the tender. As an engineer I am very proud of them.

These partners only provide the much needed financial discipline and the credit worthiness with proven track record. The fact that you have maintained all the infrastructure since independence and are skilled will not be sufficient for a bank to consider facilities to your newly formed company.

So if you decide to start self-employment projects you are a non starter. This is true in the case of the 28,000 unemployed graduates. If we do not find a solution to this burning problem even if we find a solution to the ethnic problem we may have to face a different kind of uprising soon.

Tharuna Aruna programme will have to be amended from a mere training programme to a facilitator for self-employment. We brand arts graduates as un-employable. This is nonsense. A basic degree only teaches you to think for yourself analytically, thereafter you have to acquire knowledge by attending training programmes and seminars and scanning website. Today you can do a degree programme on line.

Private sector is hesitant to take these unemployed graduates as trainees for fear of them resorting to union action to gain permanent employment even if their performance is unsatisfactory. This can be approached in a different way. If you form 24 Tharuna Aruna Management Companies in the 24 districts and help them to obtain outsourcing activities of private and public companies.

These could be in computerisation, sale catering, cash handling, transport, maintenance work, travel and tourism related activities etc and they become their own masters and will be motivated to make a success of their ventures to obtain maximum returns.

However they need capital to commence these self-employment schemes, and the only way they can access capital even to set up an office and buy a couple of computers, is only through a non-profit venture capital fund. May be the banks which are very liquid now due to reduced government expenditure too may voluntarily contribute to this fund as this will create a market and new customers for their business.

Please think about what I have said and use pressure groups to solve this problem by lobbying with the donor agencies. We cannot ask the government to fund this. The government has so many social responsibilities to take care of. Let me conclude by leaving these thoughts with you and hoping that you will take this matter up with the OPA and the Institution of Engineers and any other relevant bodies.

Once again let me say a big thank you for inviting me to share my vision for our engineers, and I feel I have come back to where I belong as an engineer.

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