{"id":106572,"date":"2020-09-13T23:19:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T05:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=106572"},"modified":"2020-09-13T15:29:53","modified_gmt":"2020-09-13T22:29:53","slug":"an-open-letter-to-dr-kohona-designated-sri-lankan-ambassador-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/13\/an-open-letter-to-dr-kohona-designated-sri-lankan-ambassador-to-china\/","title":{"rendered":"AN OPEN LETTER TO DR.KOHONA -DESIGNATED SRI LANKAN AMBASSADOR TO CHINA"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">Malin\u00a0 Abeyatunge <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Congratulations\nto you on being designated to china as Sri Lankan Ambassador. I watched the\nSirasa Pathekade  program by Asoka Dias&nbsp; interviewing you. President\nGotabaya has quite rightly picked the right person to the right position. Mr.\nKohana has already identified his role and Sri Lankans can be assured that he\nwill perform his duties to the best of his ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I\nRemember&nbsp; having met him in Colombo when the LTTE at its peak, as a\nrepresentative of one of the&nbsp; foreign organisation based in Melbourne against\nLTTE. SPUR org&nbsp; had many a discussions&nbsp; over the LTTE problem with\nhim during this time. I can recollect Mr. S.L. Gunasekera too among the other\npatriots I met during that period. Because of the time constraints at the above\ninterview, Dr Kohana touched his plan only on at macro level. As a dual citizen\nliving in Australia (Melbourne),I wish to bring another area at micro level to\nyour focus&nbsp; where Sri Lanka can expand (if not started yet) and that is\nselling Education\u2019 to Chinese students. Australia has made one of their most\nlucrative income earning investments in the past before&nbsp;\nCovid-19.&nbsp;&nbsp; Australia was in forefront before COVID-19 in attracting\nforeign Chinese students to their Australian Universities&nbsp; but it\nhas&nbsp; come to a halt due to both China and Australia are currently at\nlogger heads both politically and economically. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\nAustralia\u2019s world- class international education sector contributed $34 billion\nto the local economy last year, an increase of 15.3 per cent. Minister for\nEducation Dan Tehan said Australia hosted a record 690,000 international\nstudents in 2018 who paid tuition fees and spent money on living costs.\u201d\nSources-GOOGLE. The above quote is just to give you a glimpse of how lucrative\nbusiness it is.&nbsp; So, let us make hay while the sun shines. This would be\nthe ideal time for Sri Lanka to walk into Australian shoes and&nbsp; start a\nnew investment strategy in selling education to the stranded Chinese students.\nOpen up a few of our top level universities to them. Invite them to join our\nUniversities. He can&nbsp; discuss this with the Minister of Higher Education\nDr, G.L.Peiris in promoting this concept.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Australian\nUniversities were providing following educational programs like Basic English\ncourses for novices and beginners, business and accounting degrees and\npost-degrees; diplomas&nbsp; in many fields etc. and there is a big vacuum in\nthese fields now where our universities can fit in.&nbsp; The Sri Lankan\nForeign Student Agencies can throw some light into this too. So my request to\nyou is to give this matter a serious thought and grab this opportunity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Malin&nbsp;\nAbeyatunge <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malin\u00a0 Abeyatunge Congratulations to you on being designated to china as Sri Lankan Ambassador. I watched the Sirasa Pathekade program by Asoka Dias&nbsp; interviewing you. President Gotabaya has quite rightly picked the right person to the right position. Mr. Kohana has already identified his role and Sri Lankans can be assured that he will perform [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malin-abeyatunga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106572","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=106572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}