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Outgoing SLRC Chairman Samarasinghe speaks of trajectory of a National Channel

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For the last 42 years Rupavahini has been a part of the lives of thousands of Sri Lankans. Every day for the last 42 years, thousands of Sri Lankans have switched on their TV sets to watch the news or to watch a film or a TV series on Rupavahini. The SLRC celebrated its 42 years of existence recently. Outgoing Chairman of Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC), Dr. Prasad Samarasinghe speaks on the path taken by Rupavahini under his tenure:

“I took this opportunity in a completely different way. Not in a traditional way. What I planned to do is what this country wants. The channel can be the traditional channel. You will need the teledrama, reality shows, musical shows. You need the standard format of normal free to air channel. But what I thought is actually this is a national TV channel. National TV channel can easily go to any school, any Government organisation, they can work with anybody to do something better for the country. My main thought is that. Before that I try to understand what this country wants and how to solve the country’s problems. So, whatever I do, the entire list you go through one by one and you will understand everything related to the country’s problems.

“If you take the ‘Freelancer’ programme, those freelancers brought in US$ 140 million in 2022. They are not going to the Middle East. They can work in Sri Lanka and have a good salary also. But the problem is the recognition. Why can’t people recognise freelancers as nice people? Why are they not recognised as professionals? If a freelancer goes to any bank and asks for something, the bank will not recognise him. The bank wants the person to have a stable monthly salary, which is wrong. As everybody is paid, and if they are doing genuine work, they should be recognised. The ‘Freelancer’ programme was purely for that actually. We started and ran it for almost six months.

“The second one is on Information Technology (IT). Annual requirement of IT is 20,000. The supply of that is close to 12,000. Out of 12,000, we have more than 10,000 from private institutes. Still we have a gap of 8,000. Then how do we promote IT? The good example is the Moratuwa University which started their entire IT programming module through community e-learning and free of charge. After finishing the six modules, the students can get a Moratuwa University certificate. I’m sure if somebody is going through that and gets that certificate, he or she will not give up. That person will completely go to the next level. And that we promote as ‘Samata IT’ (‘IT for everyone’). With that actually the number of registrations increased, competition increased and everything happened. And the participants got very good recognition.

“The Small and Medium Scale Entrepreneur (SME) is a sector we should take forward. Then only can the country move forward. And the SME sector is having a whole lot of problems. Who is going to solve those? How do we do that? That was started as ‘Industry Sri Lanka’. And then we started going from the district level to have a kind of clinic. We finished Gampaha. We did another one in Kurunegala recently and hope to go to other cities as well. After that we go to the ground level, we provide solutions and solve their problems. The similar thing happened in the TV programme and it is telecast on Thursday from 9.30 pm to 11.00 pm. By doing that, they can have a good product. For them to go to the international market, somebody should support them. Who can support to take them into the international level in Sri Lanka? We have 60 foreign missions. We started that discussion, and we called it as ‘Connect Sri Lanka’. An Ambassador participates online for the two-hour discussion programme to talk about their features, facilities for the entrepreneurs and more. If SME people can watch that, then they can get superb motivation to do something for the export market.

“And the other thing is how many people are moving out of the country, and I don’t think we can stop it. But the only thing we can do is to get their support to support this country. And tell me, any CSR project which is transparent. Say you are in Australia, you donate $ 10. Do you see the $ 10 going to the real poor in the country? And where it is going? Always a middle layer is a pure black box. We started the ‘Trust and Transparency’ programme that views your balance. Whenever we utilise the balance, you know utilisation happened and to this kid, this number of books have been given. Transportation of donations will be free of charge and Sri Lanka Post will be the delivery partner for the programme. The auditing part is done by The Association of Accounting Technicians in Sri Lanka (AAT). The software is developed by hSenid which we just launched

If you take all these projects, these are actually more than the channel, more than our profitability. Even though we achieve profitability by doing that, our progress is more to take this country forward. It’s not the traditional channel or traditional way of thinking. But we see here a huge opportunity. We started doing few now. They can take the same path or take this forward in a massive way. We should list the country’s problems first. How do we take it into the next level? How do we reduce it? How do we prevent it? If we think that way, I think the National TV Channel can do a lot more. I was appointed as the Chairman of SLRC in July last year. SLRC recorded its last profit in 2013. Since then, SLRC was suffering losses till last year. Since August 2023, I was able to make this a profit-earning corporation.”

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