The SCATS Technology committee was established to initiate programs to introduce new technology from Australia to Sri Lanka with the help of professional expertise of Sri Lankans in Australia. These programs are intended to benefit both Australia and Sri Lanka.
Our main objective is to undertake projects where appropriate technologies and other professional skills could be transferred to Sri Lanka through government as well as private sector organisations. SCATS Sri Lanka and Dharmavijaya Foundation help us to coordinate with interested parties in Sri Lanka to implement various projects. Last year, these two organisations helped us to coordinate a project to introduce ‘button mushroom’ to Sri Lanka. SCATS provided farming guidelines and mushroom spawns for initial feasibility studies. This project is continued this year.
The technology committee, with support from organisations in Sri Lanka, has identified environment protection and waste management, technology for rural areas, and commercial products from agricultural waste as possible areas for new projects in the coming year. As an initial step to get support for this work from Sri Lankan professionals, SCATS has taken steps to establish a technical and professional expertise database of Sri Lankans in Australia.(If interested Sri Lankans in other countries can participate). We believe that the establishement of such a database is long overdue. The database will also serve many other purposes, including better communication at professional level, exchange of information , consultancy opportunities, support fellow Sri Lankans coming to Australia for education or training purposes and assist new Sri Lankan migrants to Australia in their efforts to find employment.
SCATS would like to invite Sri Lankans to submit entries for the database by completing the entry form. Entry forms and further information can be obtained from Wasantha Perera( email Wasantha ,Thilak Gunatillake (email Thilak) or Priyantha Mendis- Chairman of the Technology Committee 97/98 (email Priyantha). SCATS plans to make the database available to interested parties in Australia and Sri Lanka. Please note that participants of this database can select the level of information which might be made available to other parties. More details on issues of Privacy of Information are available in the entry form.
Many Sri Lankans in Victoria supported the book donation program we organised last year. Nearly three thousand books were donated to libraries through Dhramavijaya Foundation. This year we have planned a book donation program to benefit Sri Lankan university libraries. We requested the libraries to provide us a list of mostly needed books. Several universities provided us lists of books required and we purchased more than A$1500 worth of books from SCATS general funds last year. Also, thanks to the Sri Lankan Community in Melbourne, Sydney and other states, we received many valuable text books as donations. All those books and other journals etc were shipped to Sri Lanka in Jan this year(97).
The last and final stage of the book donation programme during 1997 is about to commence. All remaining donated books and journals will be shipped to Sri Lanaka during August. You are not too late. If you have got technical or other graduate level text book, please contact Wasantha Perera( email Wasantha ,Thilak Gunatillake (email Thilak) or Priyantha Mendis- Chairman of the Technology Committee 97/98. (email Priyantha).
Dr Priyantha Mendis - Chairman of the Technology Committee
Dr Chakra Wijesundara
Dr Tillak Gunatillake
Dr Cyril Kariyawasam
Wasantha Perera
Ranjith De Soysa
Kularathne Ratnayake