President reinstates same Board of Directors for 1990 Suwaseriya

• Move to ensure the organisation continue its service to nation

In appreciation of the professional and yeoman service the Board of Directors of the 1990 Suwaseriya Ambulance Service carried out for the past three years, President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has reappointed the same Board of Directors for another three years. 

In accordance with the appointment in 2019, the Board stepped down at the end of their three-year tenure and the reappointment was confirmed by the President’s Office on 11 August. 

The Board of Directors consists of industry professionals of diverse disciplines and expertise. They are Chairman Dumindra Ratnayake, Prof. Asitha de Silva, Vijaya Malalasekera and Sandya Salgado.

The Board also comprises ex-officio members from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance and the Police. The entire Board has been providing an honorary service without any financial benefits or perks for the service they render. 

The Board is on call 24x7 to support the highly passionate and committed CEO Sohan de Silva and the management team who run the service with total transparency and accountability as per the Board’s guidance and diligent oversight. Since the inception of the ambulance service, the call centre has answered 4,250,971 calls and attended to 921,508 incidents. From the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the ambulances have been on a 24-hour non-stop routine transporting COVID-19 positive patients to hospitals apart from attending to regular emergencies.

While the 1990 Suwaseriya pre-hospital ambulance service has 297 ambulances covering all districts of the country, plans are already in place to increase this number by another 112 by the year-end, shortening the average response time to eight minutes, from the current 13 minutes. The number of pilots and EMTs, too, will be enhanced this year. The Board has plans of securing its own call centre and training centre with donor funding, which will help with better safety, security and sustainability of the operation.

With advanced digital technology used in the running of the Suwaseriya operation, there are newer services being planned to be introduced to save lives, especially for the older generation of the country, to support the inevitable demographic transition. 

The Government has spent over Rs. 6 billion on the operation of the Suwaseriya Ambulance service since its inception.