by Garvin Karunaratne

E-Con-E-News 3-9 th November2025  in Lanka Web writes:

• ‘Garvin Karunaratne writes again today. I have read his Dahanayaka & red-onion affair several times in the Island. His telephone handling at the Marketing Department’s Tripoli HQ resembles Mountbatten’s war operations room.’”

We did use phones in a remarkable way to move veg and fruit from far away to Colombo. 

It was somewhere in 1956

It was always a hive of activity from the time I parked my Hillman Minx at eight or nine and walked in. The attempt was to   see that all the produce available  at the Producer fairs were purchased at  a higher price.  The telephones rang again and again and our lorries did move fast to bring the produce. We(Marketing Department)  had over a hundred lorries. We got so many oranges at Tripoli that we even built a makeshift grader to grade them by size. Tripoli was the largest hanger built by the War Days.  At least twenty lorries and twenty wagon loads of veg and fruit came in from morn everyday.

In the outstations we had to be in the good books of the Government Agent, so that we could walk in to his office and use his special phone to get to Tripoli. He too had a few phones and one phone was special as we could dial Tripoli Market to get approval to purchase everything the producers brought to the Fairs. 

 Economic theory that we learned from books tell that a number of traders would compete and offer higher prices. But I had known that this never happens at the Fairs. The traders are in a group and offer low prices. As dusk sets in the producers are at their mercy as they must sell. It was the Marketing Department that did give good prices and I hope to see    a Marketing Department being formed soon after the election.

It is sad that we being blessed with rain and shine cannot produce all our food. Once we did produce all the rice, veg and fruit  we needed- that was in 1956-1970, when we gave a ration of rice free to everyone. I have travelled all over the World but have never heard of that being done in any other country . Mind you the MD Cannery did make Sri Lanka self sufficient in all fruit products within three years 1956 to 1958, We even exported pine apple rings and pieces- eight percent of what we made abroad earning dollars.  Tomatoe Juice was the drink that Professor Sarathchandra liked most. 

Once in Matara I set up a Crayon Factory. It took three months of nocturnal experiments locked up in the science lab at Rahula College Matara for my Planning Officer to find the recipe to make crayons. Then I summoned Sumanapala Dahanayake the Member of parliament for Deniya who happened to be the President of the Moraka Cooperatives to set it up with the cooperative funds he held, I had no authority to use coop funds for that but I did authorize. Sumane purchased all the ingredients, pot and pans and burners in a day, twenty youths were found in the next day and we- myself and Vetus Fernando my Planning Officer moved in  with some six officers and working pell mell for two weeks  on a 24 hour basis we trained the youths and filled two large rooms with Crayons. We showed the crayons to Minister Subasinghe and he came down to open  sales the very next day and lo we did sell Coop Crayon islandwide all done at the end of the third week.  In about the fifth week we approached the Controller of Imports Harry Guneratne as we got wind that he was about to authorize imports of crayons. We did convince him that he should give our Crayon Factory a small allocation of forex to import dyes. He wanted the Ministers approval. Sumane and I went to meet Minister Illangaratne who not only approved a  cross allocation, never done earlier but also happily shouted to the Import Controller to ban the import of |Crayons. 

It is time for deep thinking and similar action soon before it is too late

Poverty and Unemployment have to be wiped out. This is a detail of my work in  1957,  Can we do it again.  I will be here to join in if we  were to try again. 

Garvin Karunaratne former GA Matara, 1972 -73

garvin_karunaratne@hotmail.com