Friday, March 4, 2011

Lack of Standards

It is sad to hear one pilots seriously hurt and other lost his life in mid air.

It was a coincidence for me to introduce 5 S principles to my students, I use as an example pilots training and the need for precision in taking off and landing skills that have to be 100% in every outing, come what weather it may be.

Any drill that involves precision needs to be perfect and 5S applies that principle.
Doing the right thing every time right.

I also use a standard statement "some time back our air force won the Quality Award and within six months lost most of air crafts".

The emphasis there is, it is not the winning of an Award that matters but on the ability to sustain (5th of the 5S others are Sort, Set, Shine and Standard regimented procedure) and maintain the standard necessary for operational needs.

The same principles applies to cricket too.

We did not sustain the efforts due to politics and corruption in Sri-Lankan Cricket Office, after 1996 win.

I am a cricket fanatic and this time round decided to be a neutral and enjoy cricket without any bias to the country of origin of the cricketers.

My 5S standard applies to all good cricket and cricketers including umpiring. We do not want some gear under the glove to enhance performance that was used in the final by some Australians, in the Final in 2007.

We do not want drugs to enhance performance like in Olympics and Football.

On the field it is the umpires who should set the standard but many fail in that job and hide behind the phrase human error.

In any good sport human error must be minimal and should be none at all if possible.

Our own Malinga's hat trick, West Indian Rooch's hat trick, Andrew Strauss 150 and O'Brien's fastest ( I missed it unfortunately) century, 100 in 50 balls and Afridis 5 wickets hauls get my untainted admiration and weightage, unlike our ITN pundits and their prevarication and vilification's.

What I want to highlight is none of those.

I have estimated that many people including young children die on the road daily and it is more than the lives lost in a single tsunami that comes once in 50 to 100 years.

We have no road standards.

I put the blame on the teachers, police, parents and ultimately the government running these public institutions culpable.

We do not want the excuse "if our pilots cannot achieve it on mid air after the war we cannot achieve on the roads", excuse.

Now there is election campaigning who are the people who are violating these rules, election rules included and the road traffic rules.

It is an absolute disgrace to see convoys of drunk and vociferous supporters.

Do not think our voters are stupid.


They may have made mistakes in the past but when the crunch time comes if there is no violation of voter right, they know how to exercise their franchise.

It is politicians and their stooges who break these rules.

It is often the people in power who violates and overuse their power.

By the end of the campaign we may have lost few more of lives and more injuries and the ruling party is culpable for not maintaining the law and order.

There is no war now and there cannot be any lame excuses too.

We are fed up of not having simple standards leave alone 5S.

This is a country without traffic and road standards but lot of rhetoric and I am made to understand there is a vehicle for every 6 to 7 persons.

We have too many vehicles and painfully slow flow of vehicles on public roads.
We will never achieve those mega goals if we ignore the simple rules on the road.
Safety first is the golden rule.