'Engineers have vital role to play'

The Skilled and knowledgeable engineers have a vital role to play for infrastructure development in Sri Lanka under this Government, Healthcare and Nutrition Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said.

He was speaking at the graduation ceremony of Institute of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL) at the BMICH recently. It was organised by Institute of Engineers of Sri Lanka, De Silva was the chief guest.

He said, "Today, we have skilled, knowledgeable, and creative engineers in our country and they are daring magnificent service to develop the country".

Engineers profession is a great profession. When you look at our history, all the stupas and dagobas display our ancestors Engineering knowledge.

According to the chronicles, the engineering profession is old at least 2,300 years. But during the White man's rule our engineering knowledge was lost. Everyone knows that our engineering knowledge is superior. Yet we are looking to the West for expertise, he said.

When you take the engineering profession, we have a very limited numbers. Therefore we must produce more and more engineers in our country. In our education system, there is no national policy to produce professionals even in the secondary education.

The Minister said unfortunately we have only three faculties to learn engineering education in our university system. But in India, they have 1,100 engineers' schools.

I must say, we must encourage the private sector to establish more and more engineering institutions in our country, if the Government takes a decision to allow the private sector to open an engineering faculty, certain political parties and factions will demonstrate against that. But world needs more engineering professionals. The world is going on with engineering.

You can see even the IT sector, Aeronautical sector, and even the space exploration development of the infrastructure facilities are need more service from engineers.

After the eradication of terrorism our economy is gradually moving forward. Now we have to build a new Sri Lanka which will be built by our President. Engineers will have a role to play in the development process, he said.