The opening ceremony of the ‘Ethera Sisu Diriya’, initiated under the ‘Mahajana Mehewara’ CSR drives of the People’s Bank was held under the auspices of Dr. Willie Gamage, Governor, Southern Province; Sujeewa Rajapakse, Chairman, People’s Bank; and Ranjith Kodituwakku, CEO/GM.
‘People’s Bank launched Ethera Sisu Diriya’ in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau, Ministry of Education, District Secretariats, and Divisional Secretariats. It was a tribute to foreign employees who toil tirelessly to earn foreign exchange to provide a better life for their loved ones and strengthen the country’s economy. The purpose of introducing this program was to assist their children’s education without a parent, thus ensuring the child’s development into a good citizens.
Under this program, the details of those who leave for foreign employees will be shared with the People’s Bank by Foreign Employment Bureau and Development Officers in District Secretariats. If such people have children of school age, the Bank will coordinate with their teachers and school principals through the Ministry of Education to monitor the progress of those children. This will be done via a specially designed progress report which will be used to evaluate each child’s education, mentality, and extracurricular activities by the school. The Bank reviews this report and connects with foreign employee’s families to plan for the child’s future development.
“Ethera Sisu Diriya” covers all children from Grade one to 13. The uniqueness of this program is that, without limiting the progress evaluation to just education, it supports the child’s extracurricular activities too. Already all school principals of Matara District have been notified through the Ministry of Education in this regard, and all District Secretaries and Divisional Secretaries will be notified through the Foreign Employment Bureau. People’s Bank expects to extend this program to all 24 districts.
The ceremony was attended by Ranjith Yapa, Secretary – Southern Provincial Ministry of Education; Y. Wickramasiri, Matara District Secretary; Nimal Dissanayake, Director of Education – Southern Province; Rohan Pathirage, Senior Deputy General Manager (TB & OCS) of the People’s Bank; Renuka Jayasinghe, Deputy General Manager – Personal Banking; Mahinda Premanath, Deputy General Manager – Channel Management; Nalin Perera, AGM – Corporate Banking – 1; I. K. Indika, Matara Regional Manager; Divisional Secretaries, School Principals of the area, foreign employment related officers in the district and area, Development Officers in-charge of foreign employment sections, and members of families employed abroad.
