{"id":52818,"date":"2016-03-10T07:06:56","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T14:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=52818"},"modified":"2016-03-10T07:07:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T14:07:17","slug":"ship-building-and-state-bureaucracy-customs-and-sri-lanka-standard-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/03\/10\/ship-building-and-state-bureaucracy-customs-and-sri-lanka-standard-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"SHIP BUILDING AND STATE BUREAUCRACY,\u00a0 CUSTOMS AND\u00a0 SRI LANKA STANDARD INSTITUTE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Sarath Obeyseketa<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

ETCA is generating fear psychosis among Sri Lankans, elite unions like GMOA\u00a0 ,FUTA etc. (Only FARMERS UNION is not complaining of Indians coming to Sri Lanka to take over their 2G\u201d sting uniformed trade )<\/p>\n

.We will not be surprised that someone will raise the fear that farming trade may also be taken over as the barbers job by Indians<\/p>\n

Good old days we go to barber in the small town and villages ,and he is not a fashionable jeans clad ,bisexual male or a female ( we cannot remember any female barber \u2013now they call them hair dressers or fashion experts ).The name of the barber shop is now called with a suffix kes\u201d and or with some exotic name like salon where the\u00a0 salon was written and pronounced as saloon\u201d those days .<\/p>\n

Like take away Kottu\u201d shops and liquor shops\u00a0 ,\u201dsalons\u201d have sprung up every where and men go there to not only cut their hair but also for nail chipping and face lift !<\/p>\n

Back to my story about the subject of the heading .we are also feared about Indians coming to Sri Lanka to take over ship building jobs as we started few ship building yards,<\/p>\n

Workers and Engineers union in Colombo Dockyard recently held a demonstration inside the port\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ( press\u00a0 does not know as it was held inside\u00a0 the port) claiming that ETCA should not be implemented as their jobs may be taken over by Indians .<\/p>\n

But the irony is that today chappati and Dhal\u201d eating malnourished Indian welders are working and building their ships in dockyard and number exceeds 300<\/p>\n

I wonder how these engineers and workers go on strike against those\u00a0 Human beings\u201d and ask the government to chase away the Indians or not to allow them<\/p>\n

We have started building some ships in our yards .As we do not have shipbuilding grade ship building steel ,it is imported from many countries and the quality Is ensured by obtaining Material Certificate to prove that they are manufactured to ship building code and also British ,American.Japanese or Indian standards<\/p>\n

When the steel arrives in Sri Lanka ,Sri Lanka customs has imposed a rule that many types of steel like angles and beams should be checked to ensure that thEy are manufactured to Sri Lanka Standard ( SLS)<\/p>\n

No where in the world these steel profiles are built to SLStandard<\/p>\n

What customs do\u00a0 ( as empowered by a special Gazette) is they impose a condition that Sri Lanka Standard Institute ( SLSI) visits the harbour and cut pieces of the steel and take them to a laboratory and check whether they are manufactured to SLS!<\/p>\n

Even though we submit original steel certificate they do not believe it<\/p>\n

Process of, visiting the harbour ,cutting samples .taking them to a lab and approving or disapproving takes a week or more<\/p>\n

When they were contracted to expedite the process or evEn waive off on the basis that they were imported for ship building but not for trading in Galwala\u201d to make gates for home etc .bureaucratic SLSI refuses to budge<\/p>\n

Claiming that they are audited by Audit Bureau and fear of being dragged to FCID perhaps\u201d ! they tell us the keep the consignment unused until they approve.<\/p>\n

MY final resort was to write to Ease of doing Business who promised to take the matter up at next forum on 30th<\/sup> March<\/p>\n

Am I wait three weeks and stop building the ships ??<\/p>\n

When I made a call\u00a0 to Director General of SLSI ,the call was connected by his secretary to him after mentioning\u00a0 my name he took my call<\/p>\n

First greeting answer to me\u00a0 (as a investor in this country\u00a0 ) was \u201dwhat is your problem\u201d ?? in a very irritated voice #<\/p>\n

I explained\u00a0 my problem and he wants me to send another letter as he does not have it with him thru someone after refusing to hear my claim that it may not be needed to retest as no steel mill in the world makes steel to SLS !<\/p>\n

He also said that we have to follow procedure until Finance Minister changes the rules<\/p>\n

I am stuck with my steel to build ships and may be until 30th<\/sup> March ,thus delaying delivery for 20 days?<\/p>\n

My contention is as I have written before, that\u00a0 State Institutions and customs\u00a0 should identify Rogue Traders from genuine investors and apply rules with much more care and every rule can have an exception ?<\/p>\n

One\u00a0 last thing\u00a0 which amazed me was when the lady Inspector from SLSI came to visit\u00a0 the harbour where the steel containers\u00a0 located ,told my clearing agent that\u00a0 time of the day was 3.30 pm and she had to rush back to office to catch the office transport bus ,otherwise she will miss it and without checking the consignment bolted leaving us dumb founded<\/p>\n

For god sake we need to put our house in order before we invite some more Indians or any other nation\u00a0 to invest or work in our country<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Sarath Obeyseketa ETCA is generating fear psychosis among Sri Lankans, elite unions like GMOA\u00a0 ,FUTA etc. (Only FARMERS UNION is not complaining of Indians coming to Sri Lanka to take over their 2G\u201d sting uniformed trade ) .We will not be surprised that someone will raise the fear that farming trade may also be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52818","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=52818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}