EFC trains visually impaired to make a difference in Vavuniya

Recently in Vavuniya, the EFC in association with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) held a ceremony hosted by The Organisation for Rehabilitation of Handicapped (ORHAN) to celebrate the successful completion of their four months ICT course by five visually impaired trainees from the district. The majority of the trainees had sustained their injuries as a result of the war and for them; this opportunity was not simply about learning a new skill and the potential to learn a new life.   

In addition to awarding the successful candidates their certificates, the EFC made the event an affair to remember by inviting some of Sri Lanka’s leading corporations to interview their newly skilled candidates with a view to giving them paid employment in Vavuniya.

To this end, Cargills ( Ceylon) Plc., Singer ( Sri Lanka) Plc., Hatton National Bank, People’s Bank and Bank of Ceylon all gladly stepped up to the mark.

In her welcome speech Meghamali Aluwihare, Coordinator for the Network on Disability, EFC spoke of the EFC’s long held vision to promote social harmony through productive employment and the objective of the EFC’s Network for Disability to promote training and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities in the private sector organisations.

Although the EFC’s training staff Manqué Gunaratne had already successfully trained 63 visually impaired persons at the training center in Colombo, it was always an ambition to extend the training to other parts of the island.  

This desire was eventually realised when Chief Technical Officer Joe Connolly of the ILO Vavuniya and Vellayam Subramaniam, President of ORHAN approached the EFC to discuss the possibility of extending the training to the Northern Province.

For Connolly the need for this course and more importantly the EFC’s ability to engage corporations to offer employment in the North was obvious. “It is easy to re-build infrastructure, [and] we can re-build economies. It’s much more difficult to re-build lives that have been affected by this war and I think this is one step in the right direction.”

For Subramanium, the President of ORHAN and a resident of Vavuniya himself this training course was to be the first of many. He called upon government bodies as well as the private sector to continue their support. “ORHAN is working very hard to make Vavuniya a disabled friendly district and this programme is just part of a 5 year strategy commencing in 2012.”  

The course was also applauded by a number of distinguished guests from the Labour Department, the District Social Service and the Government Agency in Vavuniya.  

“It is important that we do not discriminate when to comes to job recruitment and it is of utmost importance to give people equal rights. Our duty is to ensure their upliftment in society.” said Mrs. Leeladedi Ananthanadarajah, Assistant Commissioner of Labour Vavuinya.

For the IT trainees, Sinnaththurai Ranchiny, Karuppaiya Sivakumar, Thiriloganathan Nant-hinithevi, Perampalam Ganakumar and Sivapp-athasundram Prethepan the event marked more than just the end of a gruelling four months of IT training.

As their teacher Manqué Gunaratne recalled, “Practically the entire group had never encountered a computer before in their lives.”

As well as learning IT, many of the trainees got the double benefit of learning English too.  

Nanthinithevi’s English improved so much that she insisted on taking her final IT exam in English and also impressed attendees at the event by addressing them with a speech in English. As four of the five trainees were unemployed, the real possibility of paid employment with a blue chip company was potentially a life changing opportunity.  

EFC Director General Ravi Peiris said in his speech, “Today you go out of this building with a certificate under your belt, knowing that you are familiar with a skill which will assist you in finding employment. In the event of you finding an employer to undergo a period of training, take maximum opportunity of it. You have been chosen by the employer not on the basis of your disability but because of the employer believes that you have something positive to contribute to the organisation. This is something very important that you need to keep in your mind, which I am sure will help you to develop in your future careers.”  

The unreserved support from the national corporations invited was also palpable as they sat with trainees to discuss their skills, and aspirations.

One trainee, Sivapp-athasundram Prethepan was immediately successful in securing a job offer from Singer Plc. and started work this week.

Representing Cargills, G. Samuel Neshakumar, Regional Business Develo-pment Manager (North), spoke of the company’s vast expansion into the Northern Province, “Cargills focus right now is to develop the Northern Province, and in terms of our corporate responsibility to provide jobs to the youth. Our Chairman has taken this event very seriously so I am attending to see if we can set one of the trainees up in our operations. We already have Food Citys and vegetable collection centres in the North and we are about to open a four floor commercial complex as well as more Food Citys in the area. Within the last two years Cargills has already provided almost 120 job opportunities to the youth of the North.”

In terms of what Cargills as a company looked for Neshkumar said that he was looking for a young person who could help the company to progress and become real breadwinners for Cargills.

“From the moment you join Cargills, once you start working and contributing, you come up in life.” Buoyed by the success of this event the EFC in association with the ILO and ORHAN will be conducting a second training course in Vavuinya in January 2012.  Its certification ceremony for the Colombo trainees will be held next month on 3 December.