{"id":103198,"date":"2020-06-05T15:22:25","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T22:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=103198"},"modified":"2020-06-05T15:22:25","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T22:22:25","slug":"the-valachena-paper-factory-and-paper-making-as-an-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/06\/05\/the-valachena-paper-factory-and-paper-making-as-an-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"The Valachena Paper Factory and Paper Making as an industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunaratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

It is heartening to note that action is being\ntaken to resurrect the Valachenai Paper Factory. I have had the occasion to see\nthe paper being made when I had used their Circuit Bungalow on my circuits in\nthe Sixties. In fact on my visit to Batticaloa in 2019 I drove up to the gates \nthat were closed, gazed at the ruins of the\ngreat industrial complex imagining what a loss it was. The Government needs to\nbe congradulated on its success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its hey days it was lorryloads of straw from\nHingurakgoda and Polonnaruwa that were the raw material \nfor paper making. It was a boon- an additional\nincome to the farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had highlighted several times in my books and\nendless Papers that paper making is an area where we can easily succeed. I have\nsuggested that a few small scale paper making machines should be imported and\nset up in our colonies. This is a task that can easily be done within two\nmonths and we can get Paper using the straw of the Yala 2020 paddy crop. \nThe funds being used to import the machines and\ninstallatioin can easily be recouped within the first two years. It will be a\nmassive saving on our import bill because today we do not make any paper. In my\ndays acting alone as the GA at Matara I established the Boatyard with two\nmonths. I am certain that President Gotabhaya’s Government can do better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All our paper is imported today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paper making needs the short fibre available in\nthe straw to be mixed with the long fibre. Earlier Paper pulp was imported and\nmixed with the straw. May I suggest that immediate action be taken to collect\nall the waste paper from government offices, make them into pulp in Colombo and\nfeed the pulp to Valachenai. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is sad that perhaps Sri Lanka is the only\ncountry in the world that does not make paper out of waste paper. I hark back\nto my days in Bangladesh where when, I noticed some youths carefully collecting\nthe cardboard covers on lunch packets served to the hundreds of youths that\nparticipated in the Training Workshops on my Self Employment Programme. They\nwere using the discarded  cardboard to make paper and\ncardboard. Today waste paper is being exported to India and we earn some $ 4.6\nmillion (2015). Then we import the cardboard and paper that India make out of\nthe waste paper that we have sent to them for which we pay them double or\ntreble what we got for selling the waste paper to them. That in a nutshell is\nthe neoliberal economics we have followed from 1978 . We were foolish to have\nfollowed neoliberal economics. But in 1978 neoliberal economics was forced on us\nan we were provided with loans and grace period of non payment  periods on loans and the IMF enticed us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact under the\nDivisional Development Programme of 1970-     1977 the Divisional Secretary at Kotmale set up\na small industry making paper out of waste paper.  That was a great success. \nThe key player in that was the Divisional\nSecretary at Kotmale. I am sorry I do not know his name. If he is found he\nshould be put in charge of setting up a few paper making Industries. That is\nhow giants have to be entrusted with specific tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many thanks to the engineers labouring to make\nValachenai a success and to President Gotabhaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It is\nalso hoped that they will also  immediately take up my proposal to import a few small scale paper\nmaking machines and set them up in the colonies. This can easily be done and we\nwill save on the foreign exchange being used to import paper. I can assure of\nsuccess. These small scale industries will be a far easier task than the crayon\nfactory I established in Morawaka in 1972. There I had to find the method of\nmaking crayons which took three months’ of experiments at the RahulaCollege\nscience lab. In the case of paper making the art is well known and nothing can\ngo wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder what is happening to the Industrial\nDevelopment Board, the prime institute established by Minister Philip\nGunawardena to set up industries in our country. My only contact with them was\nwhen I was Government Agent at Matara, when the Ministry of Plan Implementation\nsought their approval to my proposals to set up industries in Matara.  \nInstead of helping the Government Agents they \nwere putting up hurdles against us. They\ndisapproved my suggestion to set up a Water Colour Paint Box Industry on the grounds\nthat none of the ingredients that went into the manufacture were made in\nMatara. I had to remind them that if Japan can buy the cotton from Egypt, take\nit all the way to Japan, make textiles and sell the textiles back \nto people in Egypt we too should be able to make\nwater colour paint boxes collecting the raw materials from where ever, provided\nwe made a profit and found employment for our youth. At that time we imported 95%\nof our water colour paint boxes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I had to ignore both,  them   and the Ministry of Plan Implementation in\nestablishing my Crayon Factory.- Making crayons was a great success and it was\nthe show piece of the Divisional Development Programme with successful\nproduction and islandwide sales. It was so much of a success being run as Coop\nCrayon by Sumanapala Dahanayake, the MP for Deniyaya in his capacity as the\nPresident of the Coop Union that made President Jayawardena send a special\ninvestigation unit  under A T Ariyaratne,\nDeputy Director of Cooperatives, to audit and found fault with Sumanapala. \nThey found it a thriving industry and all books\nin order. Sumanapala was saved a soujourn at Welikada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

May I suggest that our President may call the\nIndustrial Development Board and spur them to action at least to pay back\nsomething for the fat salaries that have drawn over the past decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me caution our leaders to take care. Paper\nMaking is held within a small group of multinationals and they would go to any\nextent to sabotage any attempt because they stand to lose in millions when we\nstop imports. I can remember what happened to our milk food industry. Let me\nquote from my 2006 book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting to note that the\nmultinationals involved in supplies have even gone to the extent of sabotaging\nlocal production. Recently  the managing director of Kiriya a company that is trying to make\nSri Lanka  self sufficient in milk\nproduction said  that he suspects a foreign\nhand  in sabotaging his attempts \nto develop local Production.\u201d(How the IMF\nRuined Sri Lanka  and\nAlternative Programmes of Success:Godages:2006)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sabotage is the motto of the multinationals \nand we have to take care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State\nUniversity   06052020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author of : How the IMF Sabotaged Third World\nDevelopment(Kindle\/Godages) 2017<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka and Alternatiuve\nProgrammes of Success,, Godages,2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunaratne It is heartening to note that action is being taken to resurrect the Valachenai Paper Factory. I have had the occasion to see the paper being made when I had used their Circuit Bungalow on my circuits in the Sixties. In fact on my visit to Batticaloa in 2019 I drove up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}