The Private Sector Engineers’ Society (PSES) is a new organisation that hopes act as a ‘pressure group’ to provide their professional views and opinions as inputs into decision-making in the development process.
The society also plans a program to create a platform for enterprise development among members as entrepreneurs. In this interview, President of PSES Engineer Ananda Devasinghe discusses their goals.
Q: Can you describe the aims of PSES?
A: The Private Sector Engineers’ Society is not another trade union but a society for promoting engineers’ professional development aiming for the following objectives: To sustain interest and welfare of the engineers who are working in private sector organizations, and their families.Assist to protect rights and privileges of the profession of engineering in the private sector.
· Creating a platform to develop engineers as entrepreneurs and extending, guiding and supporting interested individuals/ parties to become entrepreneurs and to develop them to compete in markets nationally and internationally.
· Playing a role as a consultative organization in the engineering and related fields and disciplines from village level to national policy development.
· Being an independent group of professionals to promote, discuss and advice in areas with national interest for the betterment of the country’s economy.
Q: Why is such a society required?
A: Basically no such organization existed in the country, even though we needed one to address issues related to engineers who are working in private sector organizations and their contribution towards the country’s economic growth, in other words the nuts and bolts facilitating economic growth.
Let me elaborate on this a little further to give meaning to what I have in mind.
The number of engineers passing out from state universities annually may be a few hundred. Not all of them get government jobs, only a limited number of them get absorbed by government. The majority have to find jobs by themselves in the private sector, which absorb the engineers on the basis of their productivity and value addition (profit if you like).They continue in the private sector on the basis of their performance guided by the criteria of output and profit.
Approximately 15,000 engineers are estimated to work in the private sector in Sri Lanka in various sectors like the plantations, manufacturing industry, consultation services, and exports including garments manufacture.
If any of the engineering professionals fail to produce or perform effectively then they will not be kept on employment in the private sector. They continue in employment in private sector only so long as they perform well in producing goods and services to the market.
This is a challenge the private sector engineers have to take seriously, otherwise their job will not be ensured.
Most engineers we have in the private sector do perform positively and I must say that they do so silently, almost unrecognized by the public eye except in a few places.
The role engineers play in the private sector is vital for this sector to grow and contribute to overall economic growth. Unfortunately this role is not fully recognized either by the public or the government or other professional bodies.
We are not a political group, but a professional group. However, we would like to be a ‘pressure group’ as an engineering society to provide our considered views and opinions as inputs in to decision making in the development process.
What we want is participation in decision making where we can give our expert opinion, taking local conditions and culture into consideration. In my opinion this ingredient is presently lacking in the development process and this may be one reason why many unresolved questions crop up every now and then, and lead to slowing of the development process
Q: What can your society do in this context?
A: Our society( PSES) is not a union but a society for promoting professional development within the engineering fraternity, targeting R & D efforts among our members for innovation and new product development in their respective fields and to promote economic growth within the private sector.
We also aim to help to protect rights and privileges of the profession of engineering in the private sector and we have a program for welfare of our members involving families as their employment sometime times is not secure.
We plan a program for creating a platform for enterprise development among our members as entrepreneurs.
At present besides their engineering tasks many of them are handling management functions and therefore entrepreneurship development becomes part and parcel of the process in private sector activities.
We also wish to play an active role as a consultative organization on engineering and related fields involving the broader base of the village sector in national policy strategy and development.
This can only be done through research and development involving various fields in the private sector. For this we need as a professional society first to form an organization and to draw attention of all the stakeholders in the development process, including government in decision making and strategy.
Q: How do you plan to achieve these objectives?
A: Firstly we want the media and public to draw their attention to our mission. And all the private sector engineers to join our society as members.
We would be establishing branch offices in future in the main provincial towns as we go along
In this initial stage, we are giving first priority for helping entrepreneurship and innovations as this subject is attractive and nobody has so far strongly touched this area. We have divided this into 3 prongs -
1. We encourage engineers to develop themselves by organizing a series of public lectures conducted by experts in different fields and entrepreneurs who have achievements in different fields. The first event was done in January this year and we have planed the second lecture in March
2. We hope to encourage school children to think creatively in engineering related problems and our members can help them as resource persons. To support this idea, we wish to organize a series of presentations for the benefit of rural schools. We would encourage schools to have dedicated school clubs for this.
3. Members of the public who already have ideas, of innovations, for new products or processes, probably need professional engineering guide lines and inputs to perfect their ideas into products. Our society would be interested in interacting professionally with such a development process. We hope to open a communication hot line for the general public to get engineering support and guidance for their product developments.
Q: What do you expect the Government to do?
A: The society will not demand any concessions such as tax benefits for individuals, but we seek government support to help entrepreneurial development in the engineering field or any other related field to enable their good ideas to lead to products and process improvement.
To achieve this, the government can provide free research centres to facilitate their individual research efforts, based in some provincial centres.
This effort will enable the respective centres to collaborate and interact with engineers more productively. Perhaps this can provide better understanding of the problem involved in different field for productive purposes.
This kind of basic interactions should be a continuous process with the government irrespective of whoever forms the government of the day.
Q: Is PSES against IESL?
A: No, not at all. IESL is the legislative body for engineers and we want to cooperate fully and promote the profession in the development process.
Interviewed by Prof. Bernard Dissanayake