The new Ex co for Institute of Hospitality – Sri Lanka
View(s):The 29th Annual General Meeting of Sri Lanka was held recently at Ramada Colombo on Virtual technology. The cynosure was the event was participating local and foreign members and invitees were attended the meeting.
The Chief Guest of the event was Duwal James, the Director Membership of the Institute Of Hospitality UK who joined the meeting on the virtual platform. The Keynote speech was to be given from Canada by Dr. Chandy Jayawardena, the founder Chairman of the Institute of Hospitality Sri Lanka but he couldn’t attend the meeting due to an unavoidable circumstances.
Picture shows the newly elected IH members at their annual AGM. (Seated L-R) Sugath Rajapakse (Secretary), Eraj Abeywardhana (Treasurer), Ms. Renuka Jayamanne (Chairperson), Harsha Jayasinghe (Vice Chairman), Thusith Samaraweera (Past Chairman) (Back row L-R) Asoka Jayawardena, Sisira Senaratna, Samantha Gunaratne, Rehan Razeen, Saranath Jayawardena, Thushara Gunawardena, Rauf Marfine,. Rukshan Fernando Not in the Picture: Kirthi Wickramasinghe, Sidath Kodikara and Ramesh Dassanayake
Mr. Duwal James appreciated the good work done by the Sri Lanka chapter during the past year despite all the difficulties and especially, raising the membership including the student membership.
The 01st woman Chairperson of the IOH history in Sri Lanka was unanimously appointed as the Chairperson for the second time to head the Institute for the year 2021/2022. Her slogan of the year is ‘EACH ONE BRING ONE’ to strengthen the membership of the Institute. She further said that she was happy to raise the membership to a certain level during her first tenure and supported the younger generation to develop their professional skills to meet the challenges in hospitality industry in future.
Mr. Sugath Rajapakse, Secretary IOH, presenting his Annual Report said that the country and entire world in particular was in dire straits due to the devastating Easter attack in 2019 and subsequent spreading of Covid 19, blanketing and toppling out the Tourism and Hospitality industry. He further said that the multifaceted, initial year planer couldn’t carry out and the contingency plan was carried out giving the preference to the younger generation to develop their professional skills by conducting lectures using the online technology. The local and foreign resource persons were supported the institute to achieve the targets. He further stated that the institute didn’t neglect the CSR projects and conducted many certificate level hospitality training programs to the staff of Sri Lanka Air Force and Sri Lanka Army, purely on voluntary basis. Mr. Rukshan Fernando, our Exco member conducted these training programs. The Institute of Hospitality Sri Lanka was instrumental in using the social media in order to give a wide publicity on our institute and develop the networking globally.
The entire membership of the Executive committee gave their fullest support despite the difficult situation in achieving the goals.