Credibility of some awards
Some time ago, the Sunday Times Business section raised a question about the credibility of some of the awards presented to our corporate sector entities. I was reminded of the validity of that question recently by the wide publicity generated by an insurance company that claimed to have shone at the ‘first edition of the Insurance Industry Awards of Sri Lanka.’ Curious about what this awards function purporting to be ‘of Sri Lanka’ is, I looked deeper into the matter, and discovered the following:The presenter of the awards is an Indian company called Fintelekt, based in Pune and unknown in Sri Lanka till it suddenly took it upon itself to declare the winners of 12 insurance industry awards to local companies.
The insurance sector regulator – the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka (IBSL) has not been consulted, nor was represented at this awards ceremony. But most shocking is the fact that the three biggest insurance companies in Sri Lanka, which make dwarfs of the rest of the players in the industry, have not participated in the awards programme due to questions over the credibility of the presenter and the process followed. In fact, less than half the insurance companies in the country had participated in the awards programme. Now the question is, when the so-called winners of these awards present themselves to the public as the shining stars of the industry, aren’t they ethically bound to say that they are the best of the bottom half of the table, rather than of the industry?
Another question is, can anyone organise an awards programme ending with the words ‘of Sri Lanka’ thereby giving it a ‘national’ dimension, without the sanction of the authorities? Looking at all the noise made by the minnows of the local insurance industry that were ‘honoured’ by these awards, I am reminded of the pithy Sinhala saying “Loola nethi wale Kanaya pandithaya’ (In the absence of the Loola, the Kanaya is the pundit in the pond). The insurance giants declined to join this fly-by-night awards programme, and the small fry are celebrating like kings. Shame.
Oscar R. Siritunga
Battaramulla