Great strides by women in logistics, transport in promoting gender equality
Women in Logistics and Transport (WILAT) in Sri Lanka has had representation from key sectors such as the aviation, maritime, land transport and supply chain for the year 2018/19. “We remain committed to investing on today’s youth to become business leaders of tomorrow. Our mentoring programme is being adopted in numerous chapters of WILAT globally,” said 2018 WILAT Sri Lanka Chairperson Dhashma Karunaratne addressing the media at the National Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka auditorium this week. The occasion was the presentation of the WILAT annual report for 2018.
WILAT Sri Lanka has been an integral player in WILAT Global which celebrated the fifth anniversary in 2018. Ms. Karunaratne represented Sri Lanka at the CILT International Conference in Wroclaw, Poland in 2018 where the theme was to create gender parity in a traditionally male dominated industry.
WILAT Global Advisor Dr. Dorothy Chan highlighted the strides that WILAT Global that expanded its global footprint by increasing coverage up to 20 countries of 34 CILT countries with the latest addition of Australia. WILAT Sri Lanka, former Chairperson Gayani de Alwis was appointed as the Vice Chairperson and Member of the Global WILAT Steering Committee at this international conference. In 2018 on the invitation of WILAT China, Ms. Karunaratne also represented Sri Lanka at the 5th China International Logistics Development Conference in Changsha, the capital of the Hunan province.
2019 WILAT Sri Lanka Chairperson, Gayathri Karunanayake said that WILAT has been successful in taking various steps to position it differently in the industry with unique and meaningful offering to the membership from the inception. WILAT Sri Lanka was able to revamp its agenda from time to time to keep up with the status quo at the highest level. “During my recent visit to Bangladesh in December 2018, I met with logistics, transport and supply industry leaders to support in unfolding its CILT and WILAT chapters. We shared our knowledge and experience in forming the WILAT chapter,” she said.