Columns

At last! Whoever it is that finally decided enough was enough and brought the national carrier and some of those who run it (mostly to the ground) back to terra firma before an incensed public crash-landed it on those inflated heads at the top of SriLankan Airlines, deserves an attar of roses.

For two years or more SriLankan Airlines has been run by a hand-picked team of master craftsmen who were mandated to turn it around. In which direction we are still to learn. Some say the runway was expanded because they did not know where to turn.
After the 2015 regime change the new leaders enthusiastically appointed a committee of inquiry to scrutinise the operations of the airline which was fast losing altitude and the reputation it once enjoyed.

Those who heard of strange goings on at SriLankan Airlines under the new management, the rising tensions between pilots and management leading at one point to a boycott threat wondered whether the national carrier would survive these turbulent times.
An exasperated and vexed lot of cabinet ministers some rightly angered by the arrogance of the airline’s top management which even ignored its own minister thought it was time to act.

SriLankan Airlines CEO Suren Ratwatte

Last week President Sirisena who also was aware of some unsavoury happenings but kept them hidden like a family boodelay, summoned the airline’s board to answer for its actions some already public knowledge. From all accounts the airline’s board had to fasten its seat belts as it ran into heavy flak in the skies above the presidential secretariat from where ministers had the opportunity to deflate their pompous pronouncements.

One fact emerged clear enough – the airline’s board of directors was as divided as Gaul in Caesar’s time. The chairman of SriLankan Airlines Ajith Dias, its CEO Suren Ratwatte and maybe one or two board members stood together while others who included highly-skilled professionals showed disgust at the manner in which decisions were rammed through despite strong dissent.

Dias and Ratwatte perhaps believe they are politically untouchable, Dias having been appointed by schoolmate Ranil Wickremesinghe and Ratwatte, once a pilot at Emirates and said to have little or no management experience to be CEO – also belonged to the college cabal called FRCS (Former Royal College Student) like Wickremesinghe, is the younger brother of Charitha Ratwatte, senior adviser to Wickremesinghe.

It seems old school ties which have tied the yahapalanaya chaps in several knots in recent years, is seen by FRCS members with close connections to the politically powerful, as a licence to ignore rules, regulations and other such impediments. Reporting last week’s meeting that apparently raised the ire of President Sirisena, one website said the president is expecting the board to resign gracefully without him having to sack the lot.

“After Tuesday’s ferocious questioning of the SriLankan top management, ministerial sources expected the board to quit on their own” it said. “After the bruising grilling, some directors who are at loggerheads with Dias and Ratwatte told ministers that the questions were just the tip of the iceberg and they had documentary evidence of many more irregularities.”

One troubling issue is why Dias – and perhaps Ratwatte – threw the Weliamuna committee report into the dustbin (metaphorically if not literally) when it made so many strictures which the management could and should have acted on. I quote below some excerpts from a column of mine last October following a joint press conference by Dias and Ratwatte which raised issues that some ministers pursued last week.

“Many, many years ago somebody said that the bikini is like a barb-wired fence; it protects the property without obstructing the view. In more recent days there has been a new addition to female swim wear. It is the burkini – a word coined out of two others – burqa and bikini – which covers everything below the neck.

The more I read of the self-gratifying achievements articulated by the head honcho of Sri Lanka’s national airline and his faithful Tonto the more I am reminded of the cover-up known as the burkini which continues to show the face but for how long one does not know.

Armed with the most potent qualifications that today’s ‘mahaththaya’ class installed in highly-paid or influential positions in this yahapalana administration could hold, Chairman Dias and CEO Ratwatte faced the media. Whether there were others armed with the same FRCS escutcheon that the two main actors sported, hovering in the background I could not of course say being so many kilometres from Colombo.

But as the chattering class frequenting Colombo’s numerous posh pubs and night spots which have escaped the attention of political progeny, say in sniggers it is not a medical qualification though some of its holders are not beyond doctoring this and that and handling some parts of the anatomy when time and circumstances permit.

One report led its coverage of the media conference with the headline “Dias side-steps Weliamuna findings”. The news report went on to say that the chairman of the national carrier did not respond to allegations contained in a government commissioned report which had found that the airline illegally provided the services of an air hostess to a politician while the airline was also a “paradise for sexual predators.”

SriLankan Airlines CEO Suren Ratwatte

Apparently “Dias was irked when questioned on the action he had taken in respect of the Board of Inquiry” conducted by lawyer J. Weliamuna who had reported “massive corruption and sexual scandals” at the loss-making carrier. The public had long known of the scandalous nature of mismanagement, abuse and financial profligacy at SriLankan Airlines in the past years especially under the Rajapaksa administration.

But long before Weliamuna and his three-member team were picked to investigate the goings-on, the presidential election campaign saw allegation after allegation thrown at the national carrier and those who ran it – to the ground one might say.

So with all the strictures made by those in the government who put Dias and his crew into place and the findings of the Weliamuna inquiry delving deeper into some of those allegations with the help of ex-staffers and current employees, the public would have expected the holders of office at the airline to make a more determined and exhaustive effort to examine the findings of the inquiry without shunting much of it aside as lacking in evidence or the tales of discredited or disgruntled individuals.

In the meantime there are other issues that cannot be swept under the carpet or simply wished away. The media report cited earlier said that Dias was “irked when questioned on the action he had taken in respect of the Board of Inquiry” conducted by Weliamuna.

Dias claimed the latter allegations were “personal matters” and not “within our purview.”
When the journalist persisted and asked him who released the female cabin crew member to go to do political work for Namal Rajapaksa, Dias is reported to have replied “You know, you know, I mean personal things of that nature, I don’t think it is appropriate at this (press conference), air hostesses and things like that.”

Now that is what is worrying. The attempt to dismiss these charges as “personal things” is what is not appropriate, not the fact that the question was asked at the press conference.

No doubt the intention of the management in calling the conference was to inform of the improved performance of the airline in the last one and a half years or more under their wing. Of course it might have been more appropriate if it was also clearly stated how much lower oil prices contributed to it.

But as Dias has stated in an earlier interview with the DailyFT, SriLankan Airlines is a state enterprise. It has been constantly infused with public funds to keep it in the air. Its board of directors has been appointed by the government and those like Dias also by government.

The functioning of SriLankan Airlines is therefore a matter of public interest as it is public finance that permits its existence. Anything that happens or does not happen in a state institution is of interest to the people.

The cabin crew member and others specifically referred to in the Weliamuna report and the charges levelled against them are a matter of public interest as they are employees of a state-owned institution.

It is strange therefore that Dias with Ratwatte by his side claims the matters raised were “personal things” especially when the report says that the crew member seemed to have drawn two salaries and even received cabin crew allowances when her feet were firmly planted on terra firma or wherever. It all amounted to an overpayment of Rs. 4.2 million and the report recommended that the airline recover the money.

The question for Mr. Dias and his crew is whether this money was recovered or the person concerned was even asked to pay back the excess. If not why has it not been done? Moreover who in the airline authorised the payment of the crew allowance?
In an interview in August Chairman Dias was quoted as saying that “Nowhere in the world are the internal problems of a company reflected in the newspapers. This seems to happen only here and that too in respect of SriLankan Airlines”.
Wrong Mr. Chairman unless of course you inhabit a different world.

It is surprising that SriLankan Airlines is engaging in this side-stepping exercise falling back on two phrases “not within our purview” and “personal matters” when the very press release the airline issued states that “stringent cost controls underscored by heightened accountability and transparency have been the cornerstones of the new strategy.”

If avoiding simple questions represents the “heightened accountability and transparency” the public surely has a right to know the whiz kids who thought up this strategy. Unless, of course, the words accountability and transparency have acquired new meanings since the Dias-Ratwatte duo were ‘educated’ at Race Course Avenue.

Some of these issues are the very ones that are worrying the ministers and will continue to occupy people’s minds until plausible and reliable answers are provided. It is time they learned or departed.