Dr Sarath Obeysekera

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Red Adair

Swashbuckling troubleshooter renowned for taming huge oil-well fires, heading a business that carried out more than 1,000 missions

 The oil-well troubleshooter Paul N “Red” Adair, who has died aged 89, was a swashbuckling 20th-century hero, portrayed fittingly on screen by John Wayne, and he probably did more than any other person single-handedly to preserve the environment. The fires he extinguished were so enormous that they threatened to be dangerous contributors to global warming, or the potential causes of intercontinental air pollution disasters. His greatest feat came when he was in his seventies – confronting 117 gigantic oil-well infernos that dominated the horizon in Kuwait, the legacy of Saddam Hussein’s departing Iraqi troops after the first Gulf war. Adair and his crews finished putting out the fires in nine months, as opposed to the five years first envisaged, without a single casualty, and indeed the 5ft 7in boss maintained that none of his employees had ever suffered a serious injury while firefighting.

As well as a charismatic risk taker, Adair was an astute businessman, creating various enterprises throughout his life. As well as pioneering semi-submersible firefighting vessels and the design of oil derricks deployed in the North Sea, he also contributed to the technical advancement of various marine firefighting boats and water guns

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We all have seen that many state enterprises in Sri Lanka have failed and co-op reports suggest that we either have to liquidate them or resurrect them by down sizing .If you liquidate them and pay VRS people will suffer ,We need to install good honest trouble shooters /fire fighter to make these enterprises much more efficient and profit oriented .During my peak days of carrier ,I have taken over one state institution and later a private company which were in the red and managed to resurrect by getting the full cooperation from staff ,managers and the political leadership  It may be difficult to set established parameters for  resurrection . What we need is improving time keeping ,monitoring the entrusted tasks and overload the workers and managers with more work .It is better than terminate excess staff .

Prime minister has initiated a task force for PPP ( Private public Partnership Program ) to resurrect the state enterprises .Though it is a good move ,it is quite difficult to implement because of yahaplanaya Concept where leftist parties and some opportunistic fractions of the society try to either disturb the peace or go for legal action.
The word FR (fundamental rights)   has become a bane as lawyers use that concept to block any PPP program.

Government should select few efficient, honest and ruthless ( to a certain extent ) Sri Lankans with no political affiliation and entrust the resurrection the organization within two years .

I am sure that we have many Sri Lankans from Private Sector who can take over this daunting task and kill the fires”

Dr Sarath Obeysekera