Quality in Action

Quality in Action

This one is for our Commissioner of Elections and his cohorts!

I give a background of my entry into Quality in action.

From selection to execution it has to be perfect.

In other words Total Quality Management (TQM) of elections without fear psychosis (especially for Tamils and Muslims).

We do not won’t extraordinary measures but strict laid down (written instructions form declaration of intent to final closure and 10 days afterward) procedures (especially for police and I do not fear the armed forces).

If he has to shoot on the head (not below knee as stated) and eliminate them, be that so, we need to wean out bad genes before procreation and repetition for future generations to suffer.

Let me start with one of my school teachers (I was instrument in chasing him out from our school). 

He ended up in politics and cut a sorry figure. 

He published, university intellectual property belonged to the university as of his own.

Thanks to JRJ who demolished English department and Pali department, this guy became famous. 

This guy was recording the committee stage discussions of over 50 guys’ and girls’ intellectual property and he took the written notes home (never acknowledged as co-authors, which is a standard procedure in the universities) and published them as his own.

Stealing intellectual property at the highest level (not an offense in this country).

He ended up in quality control unit of the government and when I visited this institute many years after his retirement there was not a single balance (quality assured) in that unit (I verified personally).

Then to nepotism in style.

I was interested in becoming a reserved air force officer (seconded officer) as a young guy.

I loved flying or be with the flying guys, including drones and dragon flies.

I applied with few others and followed the papers to its final destination for selections.

I had all the qualifications including sports, cadeting, the height, the chest and the rest.

Sometime later, I heard a guy who was six inches shorter was selected (that to state that I am not a short guy and could clear a good distance in long jump; once I bettered the university (not national) champion’s jump by a few inches).

I did not pursue this any further and left this country in the first opportunity I had (but never to return home was in the back of my mind).

Many moons later, I met this guy who had retired as a brigadier but never served in combat zone (thank god they have to retire at 55 years).

I ended up as a flying doctor (that the level of my perseverance) in New Zealand. 

I chose the remotest hospital in there where local guys hate to serve with a good air strip and an annual air show.

New Zealand has over 20 off shore islands.

They may be bad in cricket but excellent in haka and flying small aircrafts.

I joined a leading private hospital in Colombo (before my sojourn abroad) and took over the laboratory performing badly in techniques and performance. 

I told the management that the hospital should enter the National Quality Award and I will train them with the help of a quality guy (recruited by me and paid him hefty) and I need three months of training myself. I entered for a seminar organized by a lady, through a paper advertisement (forget from where she came, not from the standard bureau, I visited personally) by shear chance occurrence.

This where I got a chance to have a head on clash with air force guys who followed the same course.

They had just won the quality award.

The same year they lost all but one aircraft in combat with LTTE in Jaffna.

I told them you don’t practice what you preach and surely you should practice quality (never to lose one), at least with foreign aid.

They did improve drastically some years later.

I was happy then, that I never got a officer batch to adorn, myself.

I took a little bite at the expense of the trainees.

Suffice is to say they became pals.

My teacher did not have quality.

The air force did not have quality approach and probably army in the distant past (used to kill JVP guys) did not.

The standard bureau did not.

The private hospital did not.

University did not.

Within three months I transformed the Unit to be the best in Colombo overtaking the rival laboratory run by a guy (not a doc) from Kandy.

I checked quality procedures with a Singapore institute.

A guy would go to Singapore every Friday (chemical tests) fly back on Saturday and would also purchase the best equipments available at that time (training done by the company who delivered the gadgets).

I was lucky to join the university under Professor Ranjith Mendis and twisted him arm to introduce Quality Teaching in Peradeniya.

We established a Quality Forum, it went into defunct state within three months of Rail becoming PM under Chandrika.

Now my grouse with the Ranil Wicramasinghe who like JRJ wants to destroy the universities (not only Pali and language departments, which JRJ initiated) is that he replaced Professor Ranjith and also the university reforms envisaged -long term- by the team of University Dons.

He put a stooge with no knowledge in Quality and University Education as the UGC Chairman and his selection of Ministers of Education is arbitrary.

Good guys are leaving and bad guys are coming to roost.

By the way I visited the private hospital years later for courtesy call and sadly quality had a nose dip with an Indian guy running the place.